Hot pot & soups
Sampei Jiru
Sampei jiru — salted fish and vegetable soup
Salted salmon, cod, or herring simmers with daikon and potato, seasoned by the fish's own salt alone. One story behind the name traces it to a Matsumae domain lord who took a liking to a fisherman's simple soup.
- Origin: Hokkaido
- About 880 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Salted salmon, cod, or herring simmers with daikon, potato, and other vegetables in a simple broth seasoned by nothing but the fish's own salt. It's often confused with ishikari-nabe, which also uses salmon, but the two differ in that ishikari-nabe is miso-seasoned and uses raw salmon, while sampei-jiru is built mainly on salted fish. Simmering the fish heads and bones along with everything else is said to deepen the savor further, and it's cherished as a soup that warms the body through on a cold winter's day.
How it's made
After a kelp stock is drawn, salted or rice-bran-cured fish simmers with daikon, carrot, green onion, and potato. Which fish is used and how it's seasoned varies by region — salted salmon in central and eastern Hokkaido, salted cod as well in the north. In the Hiyama region, both a salt-only version, shio-sanpei, and a miso version, miso-sanpei, are said to be passed down, with the seasoning and ingredients otherwise left up to each household.
Why it took this shape
The name's origin carries more than one telling — a story that the lord of the Matsumae domain, out hunting, ate a soup thrown together from whatever a fisherman's household had on hand and took a liking to it, or that it comes from the deep Arita-ware dish, the sanpei-zara, it was once served in. A record of it is said to already appear in the late-Edo-period travelogue Toyuki. It can be read as a broth rooted in the everyday life of the island — warming the body through the harsh cold of winter on nothing but the salt already in the fish.
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 Hokkaido
- Asahikawa RamenSoy-sauce broth built on seafood and pork bones, topped with lard so it stays hot. A response to the region's severe winters.
- Asahikawa HorumenA local dish that crosses Asahikawa's two soul foods — soy-sauce ramen and grilled pork offal. Pork offal, cleaned and prepped to remove its odor, sits on a soy-based broth. It was devised in Asahikawa in the 2010s.
- Gatatan RamenAshibetsu's local dish gatatan, turned into ramen: a salt broth thickened with potato starch, loaded with vegetables, meat and seafood, and finished with a stream of beaten egg.
- Bibai no TorimeshiChicken and onion are cooked into rice with soy sauce, sugar, and sake — said to trace back to a Meiji-era landowner in Bibai's Nakamura district who had tenant farmers raise chickens, then served them to guests.
- Bibai YakitoriOne skewer carries the whole bird — offal, skin and all.
- Biratori WagyuJapanese Black raised in Biratori, Hidaka, founded on breeding cattle brought from Shimane in 1962 — finished slowly through harsh winters, said to give the meat a notably deep flavor.