Kiritanponabe | Articles on Japanese Restaurants | Japan Restaurant Guide by Gourmet Navigator
Kiritanpo Summary
Kiritanpo is a representative local dish of Akita prefecture. Crashed cooked rice is pasted on a cedar stick and broiled, then removed from the stick and cut into bite size pieces. "Kiritanpo" refers to cut up pieces while it is called "Tanpo" on a stick. Kiritanpo is usually cooked in chicken soup or broiled with miso. In Akita prefecture, it is sometimes served at school lunch in winter.
Wasyoku(Japanese Cuisine) encyclopedia : Hot pot
Among different Kiritanpo dishes, "Kiritanponabe (hot pot)" is the most famous one. For this nabe, soup stock prepared with natural Hinai chicken bones is seasoned with soy sauce, sake, and sugar and six basic ingredients, namely, burdock roots, chicken, maitake mushrooms, green onions, Japanese parsley, and Tanpo. There are some taboo ingredients such as Chinese cabbage that would make the soup too watery and sweet, fish meat that would influence the taste, carrots that would change the smell, and shiitake mushroom that would change the flavor of the soup. These items would never be added to the soup. In the order of time it takes to cook, burdock roots, maitake mushrooms, and natural Hinai chicken are added separately and boiled. Then, Kiritanpo and green onions are added.
Parsley is added right before the soup is ready. Since Kiritanpo would lose its shape if cooked too long, it is recommended to pull them out from the pot once they are cooked enough to eat. Kiritanponabe is a homemade dish, and there is no set rule about the type of chicken to be added. Natural Hinai chicken became popular because the meat will not become tough after cooking for a long time and is ideal for a hot pot dish. As such, a local company succeeded in its business by packaging Kiritanpo and natural Hinai chicken and selling them together.
Since then, it became widely popularized as a local dish of Akita prefecture. However, it is not nearly as popular in the southern part of Akita as in the northern part. It is also said that Kiritanponabe originated from a dish prepared by “matagi” hunters who lived in northern part of Akita prefecture. They say that when matagi hunters returned from the mountains, they would put leftover cooked rice on a stick to broil, and cook it together with copper pheasants, edible wild plants, and mushrooms they had brought back from the hunting trip. At the same time, some say that it is contradictory to think that these hunters who would even risk their lives by going hunting in the mountains in winter would eat rice, which was the most expensive food for them then.
