Hot pot & soups
Noppe Jiru
Noppe jiru — a root vegetable soup thickened with starch
Root vegetables like taro and burdock simmer in a soy or salt broth thickened with starch — a warming winter soup for everyday, though chicken goes in for celebrations and meat is left out, wheat gluten added, for memorial services.
- Origin: Saga
- About 910 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
This soup is packed with root vegetables like taro and burdock and thickened with potato starch; the ingredients added are said to shift depending on the occasion, from chicken to red beans to wheat gluten flowers. It's said to have long been eaten as an everyday dish to warm the body in winter, its thickened texture the dish's signature trait. It's also sometimes called by a couple of slightly different local names. It's said to have been cherished as an everyday soup for warming the body in winter.
How it's made
Taro, sweet potato, burdock, and lotus root are diced and parboiled, and chicken or fish cake is cut the same way. Everything simmers in dashi, seasoned with salt or soy sauce, and thickened with a potato-starch slurry, sometimes finished with wheat gluten cubes or green peas for color. The dashi is said to draw on kelp, chicken bones, or dried shiitake. Green peas are sometimes scattered on top for color. The dashi itself is said to be drawn with care from kelp or chicken bones.
Why it took this shape
Custom holds that chicken goes in for celebrations, red beans for happy occasions like weddings, and flower-shaped wheat gluten without meat for memorial gatherings. For Buddhist observances, shiitake and burdock are said to be favored for the flavor they lend the broth. The cooking liquid left from simmering fried tofu is sometimes worked in too. The soup is always packed with vegetables, seasoned simply with soy sauce or salt. The ingredients added are said to be carefully chosen to suit each occasion.
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.
- Osechi and zoni for the New YearA guide to the meaning behind osechi's tiered boxes, the regional differences in zoni (square vs. round mochi, clear vs. miso broth), and the nanakusa-gayu custom.
- Setsubun: ehomaki and lucky beansA guide to ehomaki, the uncut sushi roll said to be eaten facing a lucky direction on Setsubun, and to mamemaki, the bean-throwing custom with roasted lucky beans.
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 Saga
- Ara no SugataniA grouper weighing ten kilos or more is simmered whole in a giant pot over the better part of a day — the showpiece of the hospitality dishes women prepare for guests during the Karatsu-kunchi festival, said to have started as a postwar display of one-upmanship.
- FunankoguiCrucian carp, wrapped whole in kelp, simmers for hours with daikon and other roots until even the bones turn soft — a winter protein source from the lean season on the Ariake Sea, and in Kashima, an offering to the god of good fortune at New Year.
- Futsu MochiPounded mochi is worked through with boiled mugwort and wrapped around sweet bean paste — where much of Japan offers diamond-shaped rice cakes at the Doll Festival, parts of Saga offer this mugwort mochi instead, and it doubles as a snack marking spring's arrival.
- Go DofuSoy milk is set not with nigari but kudzu starch, giving this Arita specialty a softer, glossier bite than ordinary tofu — served with sesame-soy as a side, or with black sugar syrup and soybean flour as a dessert.
- Hoshigaki NamasuJulienned daikon and dried persimmon are tossed with vinegar, yuzu juice, and soy — from Saga's Matsubai district, where curtains of drying persimmons hanging under the eaves mark the fall, and this dish is said to appear alongside New Year's osechi.
- Ika no KakeaeSquid, daikon, and carrot are tossed in a vinegared miso dressing thick with ground sesame — a style of dish found across Japan, but called 'kakeae' in Saga, where fatty mackerel sometimes stands in for squid at autumn festivals.