oden

[melonpan]

Hanpen... oooh, you just gave me the shivers.  Hate that stuff, my mom always insisted in putting in her soups... couldn't leave it in your bowl, we were made to eat everything.

Like corrugated cardboard left to soak for a long time, until it gets a spongy texture just for you to eat.

this quote just kills me. who can resist trying after reading this?

[torakris]

i am curious about the fish paste.

is the fish paste in general called oden?  is kamaboko an oden?  or is kamaboko kamaboko?

also, my husband is in the habit of calling some oden "tempura" and he claimed that his parents called it that too.  i didnt believe it until i saw it packaged as tempura at the korean market:

are some varieties also called tempura in japan?

its a bit confusing for me.  i just call it all odeng.

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Oden is the name of a type of hotpot that features many products made from fish pastes.

kamaboko is the general name for the steamed and sometimes grilled fish pastes, this includes the familiar planked kamaboko (ita-kamaboko) and chikuwa. This are made with pureed fish, some kind of starch and salt and are then steamed. It is probably do-able at home with a food processor.

The ones your husband refers to as tempura are a sort of tempura like product, I am unsure of a general name for these deep fried fish and they may fall under the general kamaboko category They often have the word ten (天) at the end.

[Hiroyuki]

From http://home.earthlink.net/~marutama/aboutus.htm

Today they produce dozens of different Kamaboko products including, Tenpura (fried Kamaboko, also known as Satsuma Age), and Chikuwa (broiled Kamaboko shaped like a cylinder and made to resemble bamboo).

Judging from this passage, I assume that the company mistakenly use the term tenpura to mean satsuma age.

[melonpan]

Judging from this passage, I assume that the company mistakenly use the term tenpura to mean satsuma age.

the yamasa company (the red one with the korean writing on it) is packaged for korean people and i am sure that they labeled it tempura on purpose. koreans apparently call that type of satsuma age "tempura" (lit "tem-bu-ra").

[torakris]

this Japanese company, in Japan, calls it tempura as well;

http://www.optic.or.jp/com/kaneta/kaneta_e.html

I don't think I have ever heard anyone refer to it like this though....

[Hiroyuki]

OK, I was wrong.

In the Kanto area, tenpura means a food item coated in batter and then deep-fried, whereas in the Kansai area, tenpura can mean deep-fried fish paste as well.

[torakris]

OK, I was wrong.

In the Kanto area, tenpura means a food item coated in batter and then deep-fried, whereas in the Kansai area, tenpura can mean deep-fried fish paste as well.

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we sure miss a lot never having lived in Kansai.....

[Hiroyuki]

we sure miss a lot never having lived in Kansai.....

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My sister's husband is an Osaka man. They live in Wakayama prefecture now. I think I have to talk to them about all the differences between Kanto and Kansai...

Correction: Sorry, they live in Osaka, not Wakayama.

Edited October 20, 2004 by Hiroyuki (log)

[torakris]

Beside buying your oden from a conbini (convenience stores) another popular way to buy it is an a pack that just needs to be heated like this

this is a one person serving cosisting of 7 different pieces including my favorites daikon and egg in a wonderfully seasoned broth. You place the pack into some boiling water to heat it up and then dump the contents into a pan and simmer for a bit and then you have a wonderful meal of oden.

[Hiroyuki]

I'd prefer packed oden. In the konbini thread, there has been a discussion on oden, but I have kept my mouth shut because I have never bought any oden at konbini because of possible sanitation problems.

[montrachet]

I remember when I lived in Osaka, people referred to Oden as Kanto-daki. I was wondering if this dish did actually originate in the Kanto area.

Has anyone else heard of Oden being called this?

I liked almost all the ingredients as long as there was the hot mustard to go along with it.

- m

[Hiroyuki]

In short, oden originated in Tokyo, and oden is called Kanto-daki in Kansai.

from here

http://www.odengaku.net/odentoha/kotohajime2.html

(Sorry, Japanese only)

[torakris]

I had run across that phrase just a little while ago but have never actually heard it spoken since I have my spent my 10 years here in Kanto...

I found this:

In the Osaka area, oden is sometimes called Kanto-daki, because oden originated in the Kanto (Edo/Tokyo) area, and to distinguish it from the far older dish, dengaku. In Tokyo, the ingredients turn yellowish brown, as they are simmered for some time in a broth with a strong soy-sauce flavor. In the Osaka area, they have a lighter color and a milder taste, since the broth is flavored with sake, salt, and a lighter soy sauce with a shorter fermentation period.

from here:

http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia11/bon.html

it is a really good article and has a recipe for oden as well

[torakris]

I was feeling really lazy last night, I had been planning to take the family out to eat but my husband got called into work (on a Sunday! ) so that plan was shot. I was wandering around the supermarket looking for something simple but not too expensive. Then teh oden section caught my eye!

notice almost every pack has a half off sticker on it.

I added some hard boiled eggs and a 1/4 of a daikon and voila a meal for two days!!

and it only cost me about $12 (1200 yen).....

Edited February 14, 2005 by torakris (log)

[torakris]

oh and I did make the simmering broth by myself, with some tsuyu (seasoned soy sauce), sake, mirin, soy sauce and a bit of sugar. It was eaten with lots of karashi (Japanese mustard).

In the bottom right of the picture were some cabbage pickles, I felt the meal was a bit lacking in the vegetable department...... but I forgot to put them out so they will be on the table tonight.

[helenjp]

I don't recall hearing the term "Kanto-daki" for oden in Osaka, but the oden itself is definitely milder tasting.

I recall eating satsuma-age sashimi-style with wasabi and shoyu, or grilled and eaten with mustard like a hot-dog, at least as often as we ate it in oden. Actually, half-price satsuma-age grilled in the toaster is a pretty good kids' snack!

Lack of vegetables...Maybe not authentic, but I like to put wedges of cabbage into our oden.

[Hiroyuki]

What do you put on your oden?

1 Wa-karashi: 82.0%

2 Nothing: 15.9%

3 Miso: 11.3%

4 Tougarashi (ichimi or shichimi): 5.8%

5 Negi: 2.6%

from here:

http://www.asahibeer.co.jp/kyakuken/weekly...0411/00060.html

Me? Wa-karashi (or you-karashi)!

[helenjp]

Today i'm making the first oden of the season...

In the morning, I put the (precooked in rice-water) daikon into hot broth in a thermal pot to cook slowly all day.

The biggest problem is not to get carried away at the supermarket! One of my kids hates all kinds of nerimono, but tolerates chikuwa and likes hanpen. So our oden sometimes has homemade chicken meatballs in it.

I'd like to include iwashi meatballs more often, but the shop-bought ones are horrible, and the home-made ones are a lot of work .

Is anybody fussy about the kind of konnyaku they use? I like the texture of the ones made from whole konnyaku-imo rather than konnyaku flour, but I'm not sure that's really an issue when it's been sitting in broth for an hour or five.

[torakris]

Wow Helen we must be on the same wave length... tonight is the first oden of the season in our house too!

Your sounds much better though as I am using a premade set.

The same one I posted above, this is a really good product.

It is just the kids and I tonight and I have 30 minutes to feed them in between my English lesson (that I teach) and basketball lesson (that I play).

As to the konnyaku I pay very little attention to the kind I put in oden but I probably should...

[AzianBrewer]

I think oden is one of those foods that is pretty hard to mess up, I haven't noticed any diference between the stuff purchased in the supermarkets, convenience stores, street stalls, beaches, etc.

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Beaches??? People eat oden at the beach??

[torakris]

I think oden is one of those foods that is pretty hard to mess up, I haven't noticed any diference between the stuff purchased in the supermarkets, convenience stores, street stalls, beaches, etc.

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Beaches??? People eat oden at the beach??

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They sure do!

I don't think I have been to a beach in Japan that DIDN'T sell oden at one of their rest houses and with a surfer husband I have been to a lot of beaches.

Some Japanese enjoying oden on the beach

[AzianBrewer]

I have never caught the tasty waves of Japan but when I was down in Baja, fish tacos for breakfast is a must after the dawn session.

[sk_ward]

On a recent trip to Kyoto for work (sometimes work has its perks! ), some co-workers and I happened upon this oden restaurant in a side street after wandering around Kyoto Station for quite a while with not a lot of luck. It was a great find! After taking the oden out of the broth, a miso sauce was added. Maybe that is more of a traditional style of oden (from o-dengaku), maybe it was just a touch of the restaurant, or maybe it is Kyoto style oden, I'm not sure. This was the first time I had ever eaten oden this way. And actually, now that I think of it, we weren't given any karashi. Maybe karashi and miso aren't supposed to go together?

Daikon, suji (beef tendon), mochi kinchaku (mochi in an aburage pouch) and tsumire, kind of hiding

Chikuwa (with a bite taken out of it!) and satsuma-age

[SheenaGreena]

in korea they have a very similar dish, but its more of a street food...when and if its fixed at home its a very rare occurance. They use the exact same fish sausages fish cakes and they leave them in broth on a stick. You pick which cakes or sausages you want and you get a bowl of broth to sip from...it's called o-dang or o-deng..I think. Anyways the name is very similar to oden.

[torakris]

After taking the oden out of the broth, a miso sauce was added.  Maybe that is more of a traditional style of oden (from o-dengaku), maybe it was just a touch of the restaurant, or maybe it is Kyoto style oden, I'm not sure. This was the first time I had ever eaten oden this way.

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From the Nipponia article I linked to above, the history of oden:

The word oden comes from dengaku, which is a medieval recipe that calls for tofu to be pierced with bamboo skewers, grilled, then coated with miso bean paste. In an 18th-century variation (mid-Edo period), the tofu is simmered in a konbu broth with ingredients like konnyaku, daikon and potatoes. These ingredients too are coated with miso, to add flavor. This dish is called miso oden. In the 19th century, at the end of the Edo period, soy sauce was added to the broth for extra flavor, and the simmered ingredients were eaten with a pinch of hot mustard. This variation, which began in Edo (present-day Tokyo), developed into the popular oden of today.