Hot pot & soups ── Nabe (hot pot)
Ishikari Nabe
Ishikari nabe — salmon and vegetable miso hot pot
Chunks of salmon and its trimmings simmer with cabbage, daikon, and kelp dashi, finished with miso — said to have begun among fishermen at the mouth of the Ishikari River, celebrating a good catch.
- Origin: Hokkaido
- Miso-based
- About 850 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Chunks of salmon along with its trimmings — the backbone and other odd cuts — simmer with cabbage, onion, and daikon in a kelp-based broth, finished with miso. A final pinch of sansho pepper is said to round off the fish and miso smell and sharpen the aroma. Some households add salmon roe for a richer bowl, or a knob of butter for depth, and the dish is said to deliver plenty of the collagen found in salmon skin.
How it's made
Chunks of salmon and its trimmings go into a kelp broth along with vegetables, then the whole pot is seasoned with miso. Using the trimmings is said to let the savor around the bones dissolve straight into the broth. Onion, cabbage, green onion, daikon, shiitake, and tofu are the common vegetables, though which ones go in — and how strong the miso runs — is said to be left to each household's own taste.
Why it took this shape
The Ishikari region, at the mouth of the Ishikari River, has been a center of salmon fishing since the Edo period. It's said to have begun when fishermen, celebrating a good catch, dropped chunks and trimmings of freshly caught salmon straight into a pot of miso soup as a reward for the day's work. Putting bones and trimmings into the pot without holding anything back reads as an idea that could only come from a fishing town awash in salmon, and Ishikari is still said to be home to several restaurants serving it today. It's the kind of hot pot meant to be simmered in a big pot and eaten piping hot, to warm the body through a cold winter.
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
- Ankou-nabeMonkfish meat, skin, liver, and stomach simmered with vegetables, a winter pot of northern Ibaraki. It is described as a more approachable version of dobujiru, which fishermen ate aboard their boats, and comes in miso and soy-sauce versions.
- Beka NabeSardines pickled in rice bran are simmered with napa cabbage, mushrooms, and sake lees in this Noto winter hot pot, said to descend from a preservation method from before refrigeration — its name reputedly a nod to how commonly the cheap fish was eaten.
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.