Tororo Gohan

grated mountain yam whisked with dashi and miso and poured over hot rice or barley rice, the Tōkaidō traveller's dish of Mariko

Origin: Mariko, the Tōkaidō & Japan

From the journey of Yam.

Tororo is grated yam, and the Japanese kitchen treats it as neither vegetable nor sauce but as something of its own: raw yam grated to a pale, viscous cream, loosened with dashi and a little miso or soy, and poured over hot rice. Eaten with barley rice it is mugitoro. The yam may be nagaimo, the long yam of Chinese origin, yamatoimo, or the wild jinenjo, which is the most prized and the most viscous. Its home is Mariko, a post station on the Tōkaidō in what is now Shizuoka, where the mountain yam grew well and the teahouse Chōjiya, founded in 1596, has served tororo-jiru to travellers ever since. Bashō wrote a verse about the tororo soup of Mariko; Hiroshige drew the Chōjiya in The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō; and Jippensha Ikku's travellers argue their way through the place in Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige. Few dishes are so exactly fixed to one bend in one road.

Ingredients

Tororo

  • 300 g nagaimo or yamatoimo (Japanese mountain yam)
  • 120 ml dashi, cooled
  • 1 tsp white miso
  • 1 tsp light soy sauce

To Serve

  • 2 bowls hot cooked rice, or barley rice for mugitoro
  • 1 spring onion, finely sliced
  • 1 sheet nori, shredded
  • 2 quail eggs or 1 egg yolk (optional)
  • Wasabi, to serve (optional)

Method

  1. Peel the yam and grate it on the finest side of a grater, or on a Japanese ceramic grater, into a bowl.
  2. Grind the grated yam briefly in a suribachi or beat it with a whisk until it is smooth and elastic.
  3. Whisk the miso and soy sauce into the cooled dashi, then beat the dashi into the yam a little at a time until the tororo pours slowly from the spoon.
  4. Ladle over bowls of hot rice or barley rice, scatter with spring onion and nori, and top with an egg yolk if you like.
  5. Eat at once, with wasabi on the side.

Notes

The dashi must be cold, or the tororo loses its texture. Nagaimo is the mildest and most widely sold of the Japanese yams; yamatoimo is denser and stickier, and wild jinenjo is stickier still.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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