Noodles ── Udon
Oshibori Udon
Oshibori Udon — noodles dipped in grated spicy-daikon juice
From Sakaki, Nagano: udon dipped in the wrung juice of a fiercely hot grated daikon, mixed with Shinshu miso. The sweat-inducing heat is said to be met and rounded off by the miso's mellowness.
- Origin: Nagano Sakaki
- About 170 km northwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
The star here is the dipping sauce, not the noodle. A fiercely hot variety called nezumi daikon is grated and squeezed through cloth, and the juice is mixed with Shinshu miso, chopped scallion, and bonito flakes. The daikon juice alone is startlingly hot, and the miso is said to round off its edge into a deep, distinctive flavor.
How it's made
Daikon is grated and wrung through cloth to make the juice called oshibori. Miso is dissolved into it, then scallion and bonito flakes are added to finish the dipping sauce. Either fresh or dried udon works; it is boiled and then dipped into the sauce as you eat, hot enough, it's said, to bring out a sweat.
Why it took this shape
Around Sakaki, a growing area for this hot daikon, using the squeezed-out juice rather than wasting it is said to have taken hold as a matter of course. Between the Edo and Meiji periods, its affinity with Shinshu miso was discovered, and the pairing of heat and umami settled in as a way of eating it. Togakushi and Chikuma keep a similar dish called oshibori soba.
Before you go
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- What staff say, and how to respondCommon set phrases you'll hear at restaurants, with what they mean and what to do when you hear them. You don't need to memorize them — just recognizing them is enough.
Dishes in the same style
- Bukkake UdonUdon boiled and chilled in cold water, then doused directly with a concentrated sauce. Scallion and grated daikon go on top, and mixing everything together boldly is said to be the standard way of eating it. A hot version, using warm broth instead, is also said to exist.
- Chikara UdonKake udon topped with a piece of grilled mochi. The name is said to trace to mochi's reputation as a food that "gives you strength," carrying more calories than plain rice. In the Kinki region it is also called kachin udon, from okachin, an old courtly word for mochi.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Nagano
- Anyoji RamenSaku's miso ramen built around Anyoji miso, held to be the root of Shinshu miso.
- Gudakusan Miso ShiruRoot vegetables like daikon, carrot, and burdock go generously into this everyday miso soup of Nagano. Packing it with vegetables is said to allow less miso overall, and wheat dumplings are sometimes dropped in to make it a meal in itself.
- HangoroshiSticky rice, pounded only halfway to a texture called hangoroshi, is coated in sweet bean paste or roasted soybean flour — eastern Nagano's version of botamochi and ohagi, called one name in spring and the other in autumn, a festive sweet that busy farm households could put together quickly.
- Hitashi MameGreen soybeans are boiled until still faintly crisp, then steeped in a lightly seasoned dashi — a dish of northern and eastern Nagano also made with the saddle-marked kurakake bean, sometimes paired with herring roe as part of New Year's osechi.
- Hoshikabocha no EgomaaeKabocha squash, sliced into strips and sun-dried until brittle, is rehydrated and tossed in ground perilla seed — a preserved dish of the Kinasa area born from the need to keep squash, which spoils easily over winter, also used simmered or as filling for oyaki.
- Hoba MakiRice-flour dough kneaded with hot water wraps sweet bean paste, then steams inside a magnolia leaf — a Kiso festival mochi. With no oak trees in the mountains, magnolia stood in, and locals say the leaf's scent settles in best the next day.