Name: Oden (Simmered Fishcakes, Daikon and Egg in Dashi)
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 3 h
Total time: 3 h 40 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Japanese
Ingredients: 2 L water; 20 g kombu; 30 g katsuobushi; 80 ml soy sauce; 60 ml mirin; 1 tbsp sugar; 1 tsp salt; 600 g daikon; 1 L rice-washing water; 300 g konnyaku; 6 boiled eggs; 300 g beef tendon; 6 sheets abura-age; 4 small potatoes; 500 g fishcakes; 2 sheets hanpen; 2 tbsp karashi

Ingredients

6servings

The dashi
water2 L
kombu · overnight in cold water; never boiled20 g
katsuobushi30 g
soy sauce · light soy keeps the broth clear80 ml
mirin60 ml
sugar1 tbsp
salt1 tsp
The long ones
daikon · in 3cm rounds, edges bevelled, scored with a cross600 g
rice-washing water · to pre-boil the daikon in; it takes the bitterness out1 L
konnyaku · cut in triangles and blanched300 g
boiled eggs6
beef tendon · optional, on skewers300 g
The middle ones
abura-age · opened into pouches, filled and tied with a herb stem6 sheets
small potatoes · whole4
The last ones
fishcakes · a mixture — satsuma-age, chikuwa, gobomaki500 g
hanpen · last of all; three minutes is enough2 sheets
To serve
karashi · Japanese mustard; it is not finished without it2 tbsp

Steps

Soak the kombu in 2L of cold water overnight. Next day bring it up and lift the kombu out just before it boils, add the katsuobushi and kill the heat. Strain once it sinks, then season with soy, mirin, sugar and salt.
⏲ 20 min
Cut the daikon into 3cm rounds, peel them, bevel the edges and score a cross on both faces. The bevel stops them breaking up; the scoring is how the broth reaches the middle.
⏲ 15 min
Boil the daikon for fifteen minutes in rice-washing water, then drain and rinse it. The rice starch takes out the bitter, raw edge. Skip this and the whole pot tastes of it.
⏲ 15 min
Cut the konnyaku into triangles and blanch it two minutes to get rid of the limy smell. Scoring it, or splitting the middle and turning it through itself, lets the broth in.
⏲ 5 min
Pour the dashi into a pot and add the daikon, konnyaku, eggs and tendon first. Hold it so the surface barely trembles for an hour and a half. Boiled hard the broth clouds and the fishcakes fall apart.
⏲ 90 min
Add the tofu pouches and the potatoes and give them thirty minutes more.
⏲ 30 min
Add the fishcakes for fifteen minutes, and the hanpen for the last three. Fishcakes are already cooked, so held too long their flavour leaves for the broth and they go spongy.
⏲ 15 min
Take it off the heat and let it cool. This is where the seasoning goes in: as the daikon and the eggs cool they contract and draw the broth into themselves. An hour at least; overnight is better.
⏲ 60 min
Reheat it to serve, without boiling it. Serve in its broth with karashi alongside.
⏲ 15 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Regional: Kanto uses dark soy and a dark broth; Kansai a paler one, often with beef tendon and octopus. Shizuoka serves a black broth dusted with aonori and fish powder, Nagoya adds miso.
Oden in Korea: in Korea the word usually means the fishcake itself. Oden is properly the name of this way of simmering, and the ingredient is eomuk — the Korean language institute recommends that word. Eomuk bokkeum on this site is that ingredient stir-fried.
What goes in: octopus, beef tendon, chicken meatballs, mochi kinchaku (a tofu pouch with a rice cake in it), shirataki, ganmodoki. Anything can go in; only the order is fixed.
The broth is kept: a shop tops its pot up and goes on using it. Leaving a home pot overnight is a small version of the same idea.

Tips

This dish is a timetable, not an ingredient list. Daikon an hour and a half, tofu pouches thirty minutes, fishcakes fifteen, hanpen three. All in together and the daikon is raw while the fishcakes are sponges. Holding things whose cooking times differ by a factor of thirty in one pot is the whole condition of the dish.
The seasoning goes in as it cools. While something porous is heating, water is being driven out of it. Off the heat and cooling, the inside contracts and pulls the surrounding broth in. So thirty minutes of simmering plus a night of cooling beats ninety minutes of simmering by a long way. This site's horta says hot leaves absorb oil, and babka says a cooled loaf will not take up syrup. Not a contradiction: those are about oil or syrup sitting on the surface of something hot and drying, and this is about a porous solid submerged in broth, shrinking and drawing liquid in.
The same kind of nimono as nikujaga, with a different pivot. There the trick is a drop lid, which seasons evenly in very little liquid; here it is the order of entry and the time spent cooling, fully submerged.
Pre-boil the daikon in rice-washing water. The rice starch takes out its raw, bitter edge, and that one step decides how the whole pot tastes.
Do not simmer the fishcakes long. They are sold already cooked. Held too long they give their flavour to the broth and become sponges in exchange; they are not in the pot to make stock.
Never let it boil. The surface should barely tremble. As stocks and broth says, a hard boil clouds it — and this broth is drunk, so there is nowhere to hide it.
Karashi is not optional. A broth built entirely of sweetness and savouriness needs one sharp thing next to it.

The basics behind this dish

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