Noodles ── Yakisoba
Horusoba
Horusoba — Tottori's beef-offal yakisoba fried in a miso tare
A dish eaten for more than fifty years in eastern Tottori: beef offal and vegetables stir-fried in a miso-based sauce, with Chinese-style noodles added in. Born at yakiniku and offal restaurants, it's still widely served around Tottori city today.
- Origin: Tottori City, Tottori
- About 500 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Beef offal's fat and the miso sauce's sweet-savory pull come first, with Chinese-style noodles worked in to add a toasty edge. Intestine cuts and a mixed set of heart and tripe are both used, and shops vary the sauce's strength, sweetness, and heat — some working in pear as a hidden sweetener, others leaning hard on garlic.
How it's made
Beef offal and vegetables are stir-fried in a miso-based sauce, then Chinese-style noodles are added in and fried further. Older shops tend to serve the sauce on the side as a dip so diners can adjust the strength themselves, while newer shops more often fry everything together with the sauce already worked in from the start.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that in the 1950s, a yakiniku or offal restaurant in Tottori city tried adding Chinese-style noodles into offal and vegetables already being fried in a miso sauce, and it caught on. It reads as two separate things — a yakiniku shop's miso-sauce culture and Chinese-style noodles — joined by one shopfront's idea.
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.
- 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.
- Tanabata and festival food stallsA guide to the somen said to be eaten on Tanabata, and to festival-stall staples like yakisoba, takoyaki, candy apples, and shaved ice.
Dishes in the same style
- 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.
- Aizu Curry YakisobaA dish from Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima: sauce yakisoba topped with curry roux. It's said to trace to a diner called Tommy Food, which began ladling curry over its yakisoba, catching on especially among young diners for its low price and filling size.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tottori
- Ago ChikuwaChikuwa made from the surimi of flying fish, called "ago" in Tottori. A knife through the firm grilled skin sends up a fragrant crackle, and it turns out darker than ordinary chikuwa. It's a taste of early summer, in season through the fish's spawning run from spring into summer.
- Akagarei no KomaburiRoe-bearing red flounder is sliced into sashimi and tossed with its own boiled, crumbled eggs, a dish from around the Amijiro area of Iwami Town. Said to have descended from a similar dish made with crucian carp roe, it pairs rich eggs with mild, fatty winter flounder for festivals and New Year's.
- Azuki ZouniSoft round rice cakes are added to a broth of simmered red beans, the mainstream style of New Year's zoni in Tottori. Red beans have long been thought to ward off misfortune, and the dish is said to be simmered on New Year's morning with the year's first water and a purified flame, then shared among family.
- Daisen-doriA branded chicken said to be raised end-to-end, from breeding stock to processing, by producers at the foot of Mount Daisen — free-ranged longer than usual on an antibiotic-free feed aimed at balancing fat and flavor.
- Daisen OkowaShiitake, burdock, and chicken are cooked into sticky rice seasoned with soy, a dish from the foot of Mount Daisen. Said to trace back to warrior monks preparing it before battle to pray for victory, it was later served at the horse-and-cattle market by Daisen-ji temple and carried on into festivals and hospitality since.
- Daisen RubyBred at Tottori Prefecture's livestock station by crossing a sow of the oleic-acid-rich Daisen Akabuta line with a Berkshire boar, said to inherit both breeds' fat quality and tenderness.