Rice dishes
Karaimo Gohan
Karaimo gohan — sweet potato cubes cooked right into the rice, a taste of autumn
Cubed sweet potato is cooked right into the rice, built on a crop Kagoshima grows more of than anywhere else in Japan. It's made most often from September to November as the harvest comes in, and a pinch of salt is said to bring the sweetness forward.
- Origin: Kagoshima City, Kagoshima
- About 970 km southwest of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Sweet potato, cut into cubes, is cooked together with rice in this simple mixed rice dish. The potato's natural sweetness and soft, mealy texture blend easily into the rice, and a pinch of salt added while cooking is said to bring out the sweetness even more. Easy enough to put together on any given night, it remains a common home-cooked favorite.
How it's made
Cubed sweet potato is cooked together with rice. A little salt is often added to sharpen the sweetness, and mixing in some glutinous rice gives the dish a chewier, mochi-rice-like texture. Some cooks finish it with a scattering of black sesame seeds. Cutting the sweet potato into larger pieces is said to make its mealy texture stand out even more.
Why it took this shape
Across much of Kagoshima, where the Shirasu plateau spreads and typhoons frequently strike, sweet potato took firm root because it grows well even in poor soil and forms underground, sheltered from storm damage. As the crop floods the market during its September-to-November harvest, this rice dish is said to have spread as a way of working the season's sweet potatoes into the everyday table.
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 Kagoshima
- Abura ZomenPork and somen are fried together with a splash of broth, the oil and stock emulsifying into a silky coat on the noodles. Just how somen took root in wheat-free Amami isn't clear, but the dish is a fixture whenever people gather, not least for the August Dance festival.
- AkumakiMochi rice steeped in wood-ash lye is wrapped in bamboo sheath and boiled for hours in more lye water — a Boys' Festival sweet said to have fed Saigo Takamori's troops in the field. The lye's alkalinity holds bacteria back, letting it keep for days in Kagoshima's heat and humidity.
- Amami Kokuto-jochuKokuto-jochu permitted to be made only in the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture. It's said to carry a sweet aroma distinctive to islands where sugarcane cultivation thrives, and around 30 breweries are said to compete on character while observing the liquor tax law's condition that rice koji be used.
- Buta Hone YasaiBone-in pork cut into big chunks is simmered in a large pot with tsuwabuki, daikon, and koshaman taro — an Amami dish essential to New Year's Eve, also called wanfineyasse. It's regarded as a wisdom born of using every part of the island's own black pigs.
- Buta JiruPork simmered with daikon, taro, and other roots in a miso broth, built on Kagoshima's own pork — the prefecture raises more hogs than any other — paired with a barley miso high in koji and correspondingly sweet. A warming bowl for winter, common at home and in school lunches alike.
- Buta MisoBoiled pork is pounded together with miso and sugar into a keeping paste, with peanuts and bonito flakes added in Amami versions. It's said to have grown out of the need to use every part of the one pig a household slaughtered each year, alongside salting and other preserved forms.