Hot pot & soups ── Nabe (hot pot)
Aichi Miso Oden
Aichi miso oden — oden dipped from a pot of sweetened red miso at the table
A 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.
- Origin: Aichi
- Oden
- About 270 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Miso oden is a uniquely Aichi style of oden, in which a pot of ingredients simmers around a small jar of miso sauce set in the center, and each piece is dipped in the miso before eating. It stands out for its use of red soybean miso, essential to Aichi's cuisine. Oden itself is said to have originated not as a simmered dish but from miso dengaku, grilled tofu topped with miso.
How it's made
A jar of miso sauce is set in the center of a clay pot, surrounded by daikon, taro, konnyaku, grilled tofu, and other ingredients simmered in dashi. Once piping hot, each piece is dipped into the miso sauce in the jar before eating. The sauce is made by thinning red soybean miso with sugar, mirin, and sometimes sesame, and is said to vary from household to household. Some serve the ingredients separately and pour the sauce over them instead.
Why it took this shape
While Edo popularized a soy-sauce-based broth for oden, Aichi is thought to have settled instead on dipping ingredients in miso. In recent years, restaurants have increasingly served a version simmered directly in a red-soybean-miso-based broth instead. The dish is said to be so deeply woven into everyday life in Aichi that convenience store oden there reportedly comes with a packet of miso sauce.
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
- Konnyaku Miso OdenSkewered konjac, simmered in sake and water then brushed with a sweet-savory miso glaze, eaten through the cold winter. Its nickname, hippataki oden, comes from the slap of drying the konjac against a cloth.
- OdenA simmered dish of daikon, konjac, fish cakes, and eggs slow-cooked in dashi. Even under one name, the broth's color, the ingredients, and how it's eaten vary sharply from place to place, shaped in part by where it was traditionally sold.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Aichi
- Funa MisoCrucian carp is simmered slowly with soybeans for around five hours, then finished in a sauce of red miso and coarse sugar. A freshwater fish dish of the Kiso rivers' lower basin, made with fatty winter carp simmered until the bones soften through.
- Gohei MochiFreshly cooked non-glutinous rice is pounded, pressed flat on a skewer, and grilled with a miso glaze. Said to have originated in the mountainous Chubu region, it's traditionally made the night before a festival praying for safety in mountain work.
- Aichi HakozushiVinegared rice is packed into a wooden frame, topped with shrimp, eel, shiitake, and egg arranged diagonally, and pressed. Placing toppings on the diagonal so everyone gets a fair share of each is said to be a feature of the Owari and western Mikawa style, made for celebrations.
- Hebo MeshiAdult and larval giant hornets are simmered sweet and savory, then folded into freshly cooked rice. Said to have served as a prized protein source across the mountains from Shinshu to Okumikawa, it's now more often served as a treat for guests.
- Iga ManjuSweet bean paste is wrapped in rice flour dough, then coated with dyed sticky rice grains. One account ties the name to the grains' resemblance to a chestnut's spiny husk, and in the western Mikawa region it's said to be offered to Hina dolls at the Doll Festival.
- Moroko ZushiMoroko, a small carp-family river fish, is simmered sweet and savory, then arranged diagonally over pressed sushi rice in a wooden frame. Said to be a form of hakozushi from the water towns of the Owari region, with dwindling moroko catches now sometimes substituted with hae.