Rice dishes
Chagome
Chagome — rice cooked sweet and brown with roasted fava beans
Roasted fava beans and coarse sugar are cooked together with rice, turning the whole pot a light brown. Once eaten in samurai households, it is said to have spread among farming families as a way to use up older fava beans just as the new season's crop came in.
- Origin: Tokushima
- About 510 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Chagome is a subtly sweet rice dish made by cooking roasted fava beans and coarse sugar together with the rice. The nuttiness of the beans and the gentle sweetness of the sugar spread through every grain, giving the rice the brownish color that gives the dish its name ("tea rice"). It's said to have once been eaten in samurai households, later spreading to farming families as a way to use up last year's fava beans once the new crop came in. It's sometimes served with pickles like takuan or umeboshi, alongside a cup of tea.
How it's made
The fava beans are first roasted slowly over low heat until browned, then soaked in hot water for about thirty minutes before being brought to a boil. Rice, coarse sugar, and the beans' cooking liquid go into the rice cooker together. Roasting the beans slowly without scorching them is the key step; the prep takes some time, but the process itself is simple and approachable.
Why it took this shape
Chagome was commonly eaten during breaks in farm work, and the sweetness of the coarse sugar is said to have been a welcome comfort for tired bodies. Stretching rice with other ingredients shows up often in Tokushima's home cooking, and chagome looks like it grew out of a similar impulse — a way to use up leftover fava beans from the previous year before the new harvest came in, rather than waste them. In some areas it's reportedly still served as a New Year's dish or offered at the household altar during memorial services.
Before you go
- How to use a convenience storeA quick guide to choosing rice balls and hot snacks, buying coffee, paying by cash, IC card, or tap payment, using the eat-in corner, and sorting your trash — the basics for a first visit.
- Station food and ekiben (station bento)Where and when to find ekiben (station bento) before it sells out, etiquette for eating on board, how standing soba and udon stalls work, and where to find souvenirs sold inside the station.
- Soraben and airport diningA guide to what soraben means and how it differs from ekiben, whether to buy before or after security, etiquette for eating on board, airport restaurants, and things to check before buying food souvenirs to take home.
Dishes in the same style
- Aburafu DonDeep-fried wheat gluten, shaped into a log, is simmered in a sweet-savory broth and set with egg over rice, katsudon-style — a Tome City bowl said to trace to a tofu shop's shelf-stable gluten product, later turned into a bowl dish by a local innkeeper.
- Aburi-zushiNigiri with just its surface flash-seared by torch or hot iron. Unlike Edomae's shigoto curing for keeping, the searing here is done purely for the change in aroma and fat it brings — a relatively recent way of eating sushi.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tokushima
- Amego no HirarayakiA flat stone is heated over a hearth for hours, then a border of miso is built on it to grill amego trout, stone tofu, and konjac — an outdoor dish from the Iya valley. Its name comes from hirara, a local word for a flat stone, and it is said to have long served as a dish for entertaining guests.
- Awa BanchaA post-fermented tea from Naka and Kamikatsu towns in Tokushima, fermented by lactic acid bacteria. Coarser leaves picked from midsummer on are boiled, packed into wooden barrels, fermented for roughly 10 days to two weeks, then sun-dried — said to give a refreshing sourness.
- Awa BitonRaised in the mountains of Awa City, Tokushima, at about 400 meters, on a feed centered on rice. Handlers are said to adjust the feed mix daily and avoid genetically modified crops where possible.
- Awa GyuPedigreed Japanese Black fattened in Tokushima, which gained recognition after being shown at a Tokyo meat market competition in 1962 — said to have a moist, fine-grained texture and modest fat.
- Awa UiroRed bean paste mixed with rice flour and Awa wasanbon sugar is poured into a mold and steamed into a chewy cake. Said to have first been made to celebrate the completion of Awa wasanbon sugar in the Edo period, with related uiro cakes also found in Nagoya and Yamaguchi.