Ozōni is usually eaten on the first 3 days of the new year as part of the New Year’s feast. Unlike the Kanto style (Eastern region of Japan) Ozōni that I posted quite some time ago, today’s Ozōni is a miso-based soup. It is basically a sweet white miso soup with a round rice cake in it.
- 2 round rice cakes (30g/1.1oz each, note 1)
- 35-40g/1.2-1.4oz carrot sliced into 8mm/5⁄16" thick discs (note 2)
- 35-40g/1.2-1.4oz daikon sliced into 8mm/5⁄16" thick discs (note 2)
- 2 small taro peeled (about 30g/1.1oz each after peeled)
- 350ml/11.8fl oz dashi stock
- 50g/1.8oz Saikyo miso (or sweet shiro miso)
- Mitsuba or mizuna leaves, spinach (blanched, note 3)
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Halve each taro horizontally so that the size of the taro is similar to other vegetables.
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Put carrot, daikon, and taro in a pot with water and bring it to a boil.
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Boil vegetables until they are almost tender (it took about 8 minutes) and drain (note 4).
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Put the vegetables, rice cakes and dashi stock in a pot and bring it to a boil.
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Reduce the heat to medium and cook for about 2-3 minutes until the rice cake becomes soft in the centre.
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Using a small sieve, dilute the miso into the broth (note 5).
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When the soup starts boiling again, turn the heat off.
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Serve 1 rice cake, two slices each of carrot and daikon, two pieces of taro in a serving bowl with the miso soup. Place mizuna leaves if using.
1. Kansai (the Western region of Japan) style Ozōni uses round rice cake (see the sample photo in the post), which you can buy at some Japanese grocery stores. If you can’t find round rice cakes, you can use square rice cakes instead.
2. If you have a flower-shaped vegetable cutter, cut carrot and daikon slices into flower shapes.
You can make a flower shape with a knife as well. Please refer to Note 2 in the Sanshoku Bentō recipe card.
If you have time, you can make a 3-D flower shape called ‘nejiri ume’ like my carrot and daikon in the photo. I explained how to make it in my post Simmered Vegetables (Nishime). I used a small cutter for daikon and a large cutter for carrot.
If you are making nejiri ume, slice the vegetables into 1cm/⅜" thick discs.
3. Mitsuba is the traditional garnish for Ozōni, but I used mizuna leaves as I could not find mitsuba.
4. Each vegetable piece might require different time to cook, so check occasionally and remove the vegetables from the pot if they are ready and the others need more time to cook.
5. Instead of using a sieve, you can use a ladle and chopsticks. Put the miso in a ladle, then lower the ladle into the broth gently until a small amount of broth flows into the ladle. Use chopsticks to dilute the miso in the ladle.
6. Nutrition per serving.
serving: 292g calories: 216kcal fat: 4g (6%) saturated fat: 1.8g (9%) trans fat: 0g polyunsaturated fat: 0.8g monounsaturated fat: 0.7g cholesterol: 3mg (1%) sodium: 895mg (37%) potassium: 606mg (17%) carbohydrates: 39g (11%) dietary fibre: 3.9g (16%) sugar: 20.0g protein: 7.5g vitamin a: 59% vitamin c: 11% calcium: 4% iron: 8%