Oden (Tokyo-Style Japanese Hot Pot)
Cuisine: Japanese
Region: 東京都
Servings: 4人分
Oden (Tokyo-Style Japanese Hot Pot) is a home-style soup. The biggest secret is never letting it boil. Ingredients and step-by-step instructions are below, with notes for home cooking.
Ingredients
- 1/2 daikon radish
- 4 eggs
- 1 block konnyaku
- 1 chikuwabu (wheat-gluten tube)
- 2 hanpen (fluffy fish cakes)
- 4 ganmodoki (fried tofu fritters)
- 2 chikuwa (tube fish cakes)
- 4 shirataki noodle knots
- 2 potatoes (May Queen or other waxy variety)
- [Broth] 1.6 L water
- [Broth] 15 g kombu
- [Broth] 20 g katsuobushi (bonito flakes)
- [Broth] 2 tbsp sake
- [Broth] 2 tbsp mirin
- [Broth] 3 tbsp dark soy sauce
- [Broth] 1/2 tsp salt
- Japanese hot mustard, to taste
Steps
- [Dashi] Put the water and kombu in a pot and leave for 30 minutes, then heat over medium-low. Remove the kombu just before it boils, add the bonito flakes and simmer over low heat for 2 minutes, then strain. Cut the removed kombu into long strips and tie them into knots to use as an ingredient.
- [Daikon] Cut the daikon into 3 cm rounds, peel thickly and cut a cross into one side. Parboil in rice-rinsing water (or water with 1 tbsp rice) for about 20 minutes, until a skewer slides in easily, then rinse in water.
- Boil the eggs for 10 minutes and peel. Peel the potatoes, halve them and soak in water. Cut the konnyaku into 4 triangles, score a crosshatch on both sides and blanch briefly.
- Pour boiling water over the ganmodoki and chikuwa to remove excess oil. Cut the chikuwa diagonally in half, the chikuwabu diagonally into 2 cm slices, and the hanpen in half into triangles.
- Warm the dashi with the sake, mirin, soy sauce and salt in a large pot, and add the daikon, eggs, konnyaku, kombu knots, potatoes and shirataki. When it comes to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes so that the surface just trembles.
- Add the chikuwabu, ganmodoki and chikuwa and simmer for another 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave for about 1 hour; as it cools, the flavour soaks right into the ingredients.
- Reheat before eating, add the hanpen and simmer for about 5 minutes until puffed up. Serve in bowls with broth and a dab of mustard.
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Notes
The biggest secret is never letting it boil. A rolling boil makes the fish cakes swell and lose their flavour, and clouds the broth.
May Queen potatoes are recommended because they hold their shape. For a long simmer, you can add them later.
For a true Tokyo touch, chikuwabu is a must. Made from wheat flour, it is chewy and soaks up plenty of broth.
Many say oden is best the next day. Keep in the fridge for up to 2 days. Pour the leftover broth over rice for oden chazuke.
Origin and history
Oden is a dish of daikon, eggs, konnyaku, fish cakes and other ingredients slowly simmered in a broth of kombu and bonito flakes.
It began as tofu dengaku: tofu skewered, grilled and spread with miso. White tofu on a skewer looked like the dancers of dengaku, a dance praying for a good harvest, who danced on a single stilt-like pole, hence the name. Court ladies are said to have added the polite prefix "o" and dropped the "gaku", giving "oden".
In the Edo period, miso dengaku of tofu and konnyaku spread as an everyday dish among ordinary people, and in time the style shifted to simmering in soy-seasoned broth. In the Kansai region, simmered oden is sometimes called kantodaki ("Kanto-style simmer") to distinguish it from the original dengaku.
Tokyo oden is marked by chikuwabu, made from kneaded wheat flour. The broth, darkened with dark soy sauce, is also distinctly Kanto in flavour.