Noodles ── Soba
Kake Soba
Kake soba — hot soba served directly in a bowl of broth
Hot soba with broth poured directly over it, forming the base for every topped variety. A Muromachi-era text is said to warn against pouring sauce straight onto the noodles rather than dipping, which is taken as evidence that the practice — the root of what became bukkake — already existed. By the late Edo period, it is said to have spread as a more masculine way of eating soba.
What it's made of
It is boiled soba with hot broth poured directly over it. Unlike mori or zaru, where the noodle is dipped into a separate sauce, the noodle and broth are joined from the start, and every topped variation — kamo-nanban, tenpura-soba, and the rest — is said to build on this base.
How it's made
The noodles are boiled, drained, plated in a bowl, and hot broth is poured straight over them. There is no rinsing in cold water as with mori or zaru, letting the noodle keep the heat from boiling. The broth itself is built from soy sauce and mirin, and how it is balanced against the dashi is said to be where each shop's character shows.
Why it took this shape
A 1692 etiquette guide aimed at women is said to warn against pouring sauce directly onto soba as a masculine habit — evidence, read the other way, that the practice already existed by then. The dip-to-eat manner of mori is said to have come first, with the direct-pour style branching off from it to become kake.
Before you go
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Dishes in the same style
- Baniku SobaFrom the Aso area of Kumamoto: hot soba topped with horse meat simmered sweet and salty. It's said to carry the history of a region where horse meat took root as a restorative food for the injured and ill.
- Cha SobaA kawari-soba made by kneading powdered green tea, often matcha, into the buckwheat dough. It takes on a faint green tint along with tea's own aroma. It is said to be one of the playful noodle variations devised during the Bunka-Bunsei era (1804–30), alongside yuzu-flavored soba.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Contrast
- Tenpura SobaKake soba topped with deep-fried tempura. A senryu poem from 1827 is said to mention it, evidence that it was already sold at soba shops by then at the latest. In the Edo period, shiba shrimp was the standard tempura used, giving way to kuruma prawn from the Showa era onward, it is said.
- Tororo SobaSoba topped with grated mountain yam thinned with mori-style dipping sauce into a smooth tororo. A mid-18th-century text is said to describe mountain yam being worked into the dough itself as a binder. The dish is said to be built around cold noodles, since heat is said to weaken the yam's characteristic stickiness.
- Mori Soba and Zaru SobaThe basic cold soba: noodles boiled and rinsed in cold water, then dipped in sauce. "Mori" is said to have spread as a name distinguishing the dip-and-eat style from pouring sauce directly over the noodles, while "zaru," older still, is said to trace to noodles served on a bamboo strainer. Today the main difference is said to come down to whether nori is sprinkled on top.
- Toshikoshi SobaSoba eaten on the night of New Year's Eve, also called toshitori-soba or omisoka-soba. Accounts of its origin vary — one ties the noodle's long, thin shape to a wish for long life and lasting fortune, another to the way soba snaps easily, said to cut off a year's hardships.
- Kamo NanbanKake soba topped with duck meat and scallion. The going account credits Sasaya, a soba shop at Bakurocho in Edo, with first putting it on the menu during the Bunka era (1804–18). "Nanban" is said to derive from an Edo-era term for southerners, reputed to favor scallion in their cooking.