Noodles ── Ramen
Asahikawa Horumen
Asahikawa Horumen — the city's soy ramen, crossed with grilled offal
A 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.
- Origin: Hokkaido Asahikawa
- Shoyu — soy sauce
- About 930 km north of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
The basic form is Asahikawa's soy-tare broth topped with pork offal. Because the offal is prepped to strip out its rawer smell, the usual pungency of organ meat stays in the background. Each shop simmers it in its own char siu braising liquid, pork-bone stock and raw soy sauce, so the flavor shifts slightly from one kitchen to the next.
How it's made
Pork offal is carefully cleaned to remove its odor, then simmered slowly in a shop's own char siu braising liquid, pork-bone stock and raw soy sauce. That offal goes on top of Asahikawa's familiar soy-and-seafood broth, folding the new topping into an existing soy ramen rather than inventing a new soup.
Why it took this shape
Asahikawa had a thriving hog-raising industry from the late Meiji era, which fed a soy ramen culture built on simmered pork bones. Separately, postwar food shortages pushed the city toward a culture of eating offal rather than wasting it. With both soy brewing and meat processing well established in one city, combining its two soul foods into a single bowl was, in a sense, a local inevitability.
Before you go
- How to read a ticket machineShops that use a ticket machine (shokken-ki) often place their most popular items in a similar spot.
- Cash-only shops are commonEspecially at ramen shops, it's common to find places that only accept cash — often through a ticket machine.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
Dishes in the same style
- Aizu RamenFlat, thick hand-made noodles in a clear soy broth. Said to trace back to a Aizuwakamatsu diner owner bringing home a taste learned in Yokohama — a second soy ramen lineage that grew up apart from Kitakata's, in the same Aizu region.
- Edokei RamenA soy ramen topped with a knob of bright red chili miso built on garlic and garlic chives. Stirred in gradually as you eat, it turns a mild bowl steadily richer and spicier — a specialty of Akita City.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Hokkaido
- 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.
- Sake no Chanchan-yakiSalmon and seasonal vegetables are pan-steamed with miso and butter — said to trace back to fishing towns along the Ishikari coast, where it was cooked quickly on deck or shore right after the catch.