Hot pot & soups
Niwatori-jiru
Niwatori-jiru — a clear soup made from the whole chicken carcass and offcuts
Chicken bones simmered into a clear broth are joined by chicken meat, burdock root, shiitake, and leek — a Bungo-Ono soup often made from the offcuts and innards left over when cooking torimeshi, the two dishes long paired in a prefecture known for eating more chicken than almost anywhere else in Japan.
- Origin: Oita Bungoono
- About 810 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Niwatori-jiru, from a prefecture known for its high household consumption of chicken, is a soup made from broth simmered with chicken bones, combined with chicken meat, burdock, shiitake, and leek. It was once a treat from an era when chicken was precious: when a home-raised bird was butchered, the meat and innards went into chicken rice, and the leftover bones went into this soup, so nothing was wasted.
How it's made
Bite-sized pieces of chicken, burdock, dried shiitake, and leek are lightly stir-fried, then added to a clear broth made from kombu and brought to a simmer. Yuzu kosho or kabosu peel is sometimes added for extra flavor. Meat trimmings and innards left over from making chicken rice are sometimes used here too, occasionally cut especially fine. Somen, udon, or leftover rice can be stirred in for a porridge-like variation.
Why it took this shape
The soup is said to have been an essential treat for gatherings such as Obon, New Year's, and local festivals, and some households reportedly kept chickens on hand specifically for such occasions. Because older hens that had stopped laying eggs were commonly used for chicken rice, their meat is said to have found its way into this soup as well. Older birds have firmer flesh and a richer fat flavor, and many local residents are said to still seek out that meat today to recreate the traditional taste.
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 Oita
- Aji no MaruzushiA whole horse mackerel, cured in plum vinegar and opened flat, is wrapped around vinegared rice and rolled in red shiso leaf — a celebratory sushi from Saiki, painstaking to prepare, built on the rich mackerel landed from the Bungo Channel.
- AmimeshiKrill simmered sweet-savory in mirin, soy sauce, and ginger is folded into freshly steamed rice — a dish from the Usa, Nakatsu, and Bungotakada coast, where krill are hauled from the Buzen Sea tideflats each autumn and winter; a favorite of the northern Oita coast.
- Atama RyoriGills, jaw, and innards of a large fish like grouper are quickly parboiled along with the flesh and piled onto a single platter — a dish from inland Taketa, far from the sea, said to have grown from a wish to waste nothing of a rare catch, served with a citrus dipping sauce.
- Ayu UrukaAyu (sweetfish) flesh or innards are minced with salt and left to ferment for about a week — an Oita salted delicacy said to have begun as a way to keep the clean river's seasonal catch; the innards-only version, nigauruka, carries a distinctive bitterness.
- Beppu ReimenThe dish's spread is traced to around 1950, when a cook repatriated from what had been Manchuria began making cold noodles in Beppu. Genso Arirang, founded that same year, is often named as the pioneering shop; the local style pairs a Japanese-style seafood stock with noodles made from buckwheat, wheat, and starch.
- Dango-jiruWheat dough kneaded and stretched into flat ribbons is simmered with root vegetables and shiitake in a barley-miso broth — an everyday Oita dish born of the prefecture's flour-based food culture, where poor rice land pushed wheat to the fore; the ribbons keep a firmer bite than udon.