Ozoni Recipe (Kyoto Style)

In Japan, the first meal of New Year’s Day always begins with a bowl of specially prepared soup called Ozoni. Ozoni (or Zoni) is a soup that contains mochi rice cake in a savory broth. The preparation of Ozoni varies significantly by region, and each household has its traditional recipe often passed down in a family for generations.

We have previously made a Kansai-style Ozoni recipe with toasted mochi and clear fish broth, but even within that same Kansai region, every prefecture/city has drastically different styles of Ozoni. While people in Osaka enjoy Ozoni with a clear broth, people in Kyoto require a white miso-based soup, as-per tradition.

This traditional Kyoto-style Ozoni recipe features Saikyo miso, a white miso paste from Kyoto. A generous amount of sweet, mild-flavored Saikyo miso is added to the delicate Kombu based broth. Other ingredients are quite simple but are very specific. We used satoimo (taro) which is easier to get outside of Kyoto, but in traditional recipes, a much larger potato called Kashira-imo is dropped whole into each bowl of soup.
Rather than using fish in the broth, we garnish the soup with a handful of thinly shredded katsuobushi bonito flakes called Ito Katsuo. This adds delicious umami flavor and texture to the thick miso soup with soft mochi and potato. For people in Kyoto, this is the flavor combination that they must have to begin each year. If you are not from Kyoto, this may be a new kind of taste, but hopefully you will enjoy these traditional regional flavors.

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5 from 1 vote

Ozoni Recipe (Kyoto Style)

Course: Soup

Cuisine: Japanese

Keyword: soup

Servings: 4

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Ingredients

• 3 cups water
• 10 g Kombu dried kelp
• 4 satoimo taro, peeled
• 2 inch daikon radish sliced
• 2/3 cup Saikyo Miso (white miso paste from Kyoto)
• 1 tbsp Sake
• 4 pieces round mochi
• 1/2 cup Ito Katsuo thinly shredded Katsuobushi

Instructions

• Soak Kombu in 3 cups water for 30 minutes in a medium pot.
• Peel satoimo and boil in a small pot for 15 minutes or until tender.
• Peel and cut the daikon into thin 1/16″ (about 1.5 mm) thick round (cut into quarter if too wide) and boil in another small pot for 5 minutes or until tender.
• Start cooking the kombu water at medium heat and remove the kombu right before boiling. Turn down the heat to low and dissolve the miso paste. Add sake and simmer.
• Boil mochi in water for 5 minutes or until soft.
• Add the strained satoimo, daikon, and mochi in the soup and simmer for 2 minutes.
• Serve and garnish with Ito Katsuo.

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