Hot pot & soups
Gudakusan Miso Shiru
Gudakusan miso shiru — a hearty miso soup packed with seasonal vegetables
Root vegetables like daikon, carrot, and burdock go generously into this everyday miso soup of Nagano. Packing it with vegetables is said to allow less miso overall, and wheat dumplings are sometimes dropped in to make it a meal in itself.
- Origin: Nagano
- About 180 km northwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Root vegetables in season -- daikon, carrot, burdock -- are chopped generously and simmered before miso is stirred in. A slow-released sweetness and savor from the vegetables spreading through the broth is said to be the appeal. Adding suiton, torn pieces of a wheat-flour dough dropped into the soup, is said to thicken it into a heartier, more filling bowl.
How it's made
Root vegetables, fried tofu, and konnyaku in season are chopped and simmered at length in stock before miso is stirred in. Many households are said to add suiton -- a wheat-flour dough mixed with water, pulled and torn into the pot to cook. How the dough is kneaded, how firm it's left, and how it's torn are all said to come down to personal preference.
Why it took this shape
Loading the soup with vegetables is said to let a smaller amount of miso still carry flavor and salt through the whole pot, a way of stretching miso that's said to have taken hold over time. In areas where wheat grew well, suiton dumplings are said to have been added to make the soup a meal in itself -- a bowl of everyday ingenuity, drawing nutrition from whatever was on hand into a single bowl.
Before you go
- Foods to look for in winterA guide to foods often seen in Japan around winter — nabe hot pot, fugu, oysters, crab, year-end soba, and osechi — with rough pointers for finding them.
- At yakiniku, shabu-shabu, and hot potGrilling your own meat at yakiniku, swishing thin slices at shabu-shabu, and sharing from the pot — the customs behind each.
Dishes in the same style
- Aichi Miso OdenA pot of sweet red miso sits in the center of the simmering pot, and daikon, tofu, and other ingredients simmered in dashi are dipped into it before eating. While soy-based Kanto-style oden spread in Edo, Aichi is said to have settled on dipping in soybean miso instead.
- Aichi ZoniSquare mochi and mochina, a traditional Owari green, are served in a plain clear broth for New Year — a notably simple zoni. It's speculated that using miso so often in daily cooking is exactly why a clear broth is chosen for this festive occasion, deliberately leaving miso out.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Nagano
- Anyoji RamenSaku's miso ramen built around Anyoji miso, held to be the root of Shinshu miso.
- HangoroshiSticky rice, pounded only halfway to a texture called hangoroshi, is coated in sweet bean paste or roasted soybean flour — eastern Nagano's version of botamochi and ohagi, called one name in spring and the other in autumn, a festive sweet that busy farm households could put together quickly.
- Hitashi MameGreen soybeans are boiled until still faintly crisp, then steeped in a lightly seasoned dashi — a dish of northern and eastern Nagano also made with the saddle-marked kurakake bean, sometimes paired with herring roe as part of New Year's osechi.
- Hoshikabocha no EgomaaeKabocha squash, sliced into strips and sun-dried until brittle, is rehydrated and tossed in ground perilla seed — a preserved dish of the Kinasa area born from the need to keep squash, which spoils easily over winter, also used simmered or as filling for oyaki.
- Hoba MakiRice-flour dough kneaded with hot water wraps sweet bean paste, then steams inside a magnolia leaf — a Kiso festival mochi. With no oak trees in the mountains, magnolia stood in, and locals say the leaf's scent settles in best the next day.
- ImonamasuJulienned potato has its starch thoroughly rinsed away, then gets stir-fried in oil and vinegar until crisp — a dish of Iiyama City said to have been eaten since the Edo period and served on large plates at gatherings and ceremonies.