Hot pot & soups
Senbei Jiru
Senbei jiru — a soy-flavored hotpot with hard wheat crackers simmered soft
Hard wheat crackers are broken into a chicken-and-soy broth with burdock and freeze-dried tofu until chewy — born in Hachinohe, where the crackers were a famine-proof staple long before they became hotpot fare.
- Origin: Aomori Hachinohe
- About 560 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
A hot-pot dish built on round nanbu senbei crackers, made from wheat flour and salted water, simmered in a soy broth flavored with chicken stock. The crackers keep a distinctly chewy bite even after soaking up the broth, a texture that plays against the crisp snap of shirataki noodles and root vegetables. Drawing in the chicken-rich broth, the crackers carry both a toasted aroma and deep savoriness at once, it is said.
How it's made
Scallion, burdock, carrot, shirataki noodles and freeze-dried tofu simmer in a soy broth built on chicken stock, and crackers made specifically for soup are broken in and cooked through. Using crackers engineered to stay chewy rather than dissolve is said to be the key step. Variants include a salt-seasoned version with cod or grilled mackerel, and a miso version built around horse meat.
Why it took this shape
Nanbu senbei is a traditional wheat product from the area spanning southeastern Aomori to northern Iwate, the old Nanbu domain, where cold-damage years often left rice scarce; it is said to have served as a valuable preserved food when nearly every farmhouse kept its own iron cracker mold. Turning a shelf-stable wheat product into a hot soup, to stretch a diet that could not always rely on rice, reflects the wisdom of a cold upland farming region.
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 Aomori
- BekomochiColored strips of glutinous and non-glutinous rice-flour dough are bundled and steamed so each slice reveals a pattern — a Boys' Day treat from rice-poor Shimokita, its designs elaborated around Oma town.
- KakkeThin buckwheat dough is cut into triangles, simmered with daikon and tofu, and dipped in garlic miso — said to have begun when the Nanbu domain banned fine-cut soba, leaving people to eat the offcuts instead.
- Kujira JiruSalted whale blubber is parboiled to render off excess fat, then simmered in a big pot with daikon, carrot and potato — a New Year dish from around Hachinohe's old whaling grounds, said to deepen in flavor over several days.
- Mame ShitogiMashed boiled green soybeans are kneaded with rice flour and sugar into a log and sliced — a Nanbu-region sweet that stretched scarce rice with beans, once offered to the mountain and harvest gods.
- Aomori ShamorockSaid to be developed by Aomori's livestock experiment station over roughly two decades of research from a shamo and Barred Plymouth Rock cross; reportedly reared about 100 days for cockerels and 120 for hens, 50–60 days longer than a standard broiler.