Noodles ── Ramen
Oyabe White Ramen
Oyabe White Ramen — a pork broth boiled pale white, topped with ground pork miso
A pork-bone broth simmered pale white and topped with sweet-savory ground pork miso — devised in 2012 by Oyabe's chamber of commerce youth division and since spread to more than thirty shops in the city.
- Origin: Toyama Oyabe
- Tonkotsu — pork bone
- About 280 km northwest of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
The pork-bone broth runs a cloudy white, its edges softer than the color suggests, carrying the mellow sweetness of pork simmered a long time. A mound of sweet-savory ground pork miso sits on top, and breaking it into the broth layers depth into all that whiteness. Shops work in their own Oyabe-grown ingredients as toppings.
How it's made
Pork bone is simmered until the broth turns properly white, the base condition, paired with a ground pork miso topping and at least one Oyabe-grown ingredient. Shops keep soy tare light or serve it on the side to protect that whiteness, each working out its own way to hold the color.
Why it took this shape
The Oyabe Chamber of Commerce's youth division is said to have created the dish in 2012 as a local-food research project. Inspired by Nyuzen's brown ramen, and swept up in a wider push across Toyama to build ramen named for colors, Oyabe is said to have picked white for its own. The bowl has since spread to more than thirty shops in the city and onto supermarket shelves.
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
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Toyama
- Bai no NimonoWhelks from the deep waters of Toyama Bay are simmered whole in their shells — said to appear at celebrations thanks to a play on words suggesting doubled good fortune, with smaller whelks simmered and larger ones eaten raw.
- BekkoMelted agar is seasoned with soy sauce and mirin, then set with egg trailed in like threads — its amber color flecked with egg said to resemble a tortoiseshell hair ornament, giving the dish its name; in the west of the prefecture it goes by "yubeshi" instead.
- BurishabuThin slices of yellowtail are swished briefly through kelp broth, said to cook only the surface while leaving the center rare — versions using Himi's branded winter yellowtail are considered a particularly luxurious cold-weather treat.
- Genge no MisoshiruEelpout, a deep-sea fish covered in a gelatinous layer, is cut into chunks and simmered into a miso soup — long treated as an unwanted bycatch of sweet shrimp fishing, its flavor has since been reappraised and spread beyond the fishing villages that first ate it.
- Himi UdonA hand-stretched udon developed in Himi, Toyama, in the mid-Edo period by adapting somen-making techniques from Wajima. It was once presented to the Kaga domain as tribute.
- Hoonko RyoriA catch-all term for the dishes served at houonko, the memorial gathering held on the death anniversary of Jodo Shinshu's founder — the season's better vegetables and wild greens are said to be set aside for it apart from everyday use, with the devout Gokayama area of Nanto known for hearty stews of dried greens and local tofu.