Oh! Ozoni Soup

Like the mochi, every new year I get this twitch to try and make ozoni soup. I had it maybe twice in my life and one of those times I’m not sure I can even count as ozoni since it was from a Korean restaurant and it was the korean mochi soup. First time was in Japanese Club back in high school and I wasn’t paying attention when my senseis were making it for the kids. All I remember was that it was mochi, it was stretchy, and it was good.

So I attempted… I didn’t look up as much recipes this time around… I felt like winging it. I thought, its like miso soup.. just… no miso (unless you’re doing the kansai version) and you add mochi. I wasn’t about to attempt super traditional ozoni, which is like 15 different ingredients to represent something… The amount of ingredients is really up to you, gauge how much people you’re going to be serving and put in as much as you want for each person. So if you’re serving two people, maybe two to three cups of water/broth and a small pile of ingredients per bowl. You can even sub the dashi with chicken broth. My ingredients were:

pork (I used tenderloin this time, any thin sliced meat is fine)
carrots
dashi (dashi-no-moto & water)
soft / silken tofu
mochi
chikuwa fish cake
green onions

1. Slice the pork into thin slices so they cook fast and will be easy to eat. Though I think traditionally its supposed to be chicken in this soup. If you’re using chicken, cut them into small pieces so they cook pretty fast.

2. Slice carrots into thin rectangular strips. Slice chikuwa fish cake at about 1/4″ width. Cut green onions. Set these aside.

3. Turn heat to about medium/medium high and toss in pork and a little oil to fry it up quickly. This is what I usually do with miso soup, so the pork gets a little flavor into it. I forgot this step this time around so its really up to you… Just if you don’t do this step, there’s less oil in the soup. If you don’t fry up the pork then turn heat to high and bring the dashi to a boil. Once it boils, bring down the heat a little and add in the pork, carrots and whatever else veggies you may want to add. I forgot the shiitake mushrooms but you would add it in now if you have that.

4. Start broiling or pan frying your mochi like how I did in the yakimochi blog, just no sauce. You just want to cook the mochi, put them into the serving bowls when they’re done.

5. After the soups been simmering for a while (the veggies are soft and pork is cooked) and its about ready to eat, toss in the chikuwa to warm it up and to add a little flavor. You don’t want to add these in early since its already cooked and over cooking them will make them flavorless and tough. While the chikuwa is warming up, cube your tofu and add them into your bowls.

6. Ladle the soup into the bowls, sprinkle some negi on, serve.

This isn’t the proper way to do this soup, this is just my lazy man’s attempt but it came out well and the mochi was like how I remember it from high school days. Stretchy and flavorful from the soup. I don’t think I’ve seen tofu being added as an ingredient for this soup usually but I like it and the main thing is that there’s mochi in here along with stuff you’ll actually eat. Chikuwa isn’t usually what’s called for, I think its usually kamaboko but I had chikuwa on the mind when I went shopping for ingredients.