Japanese Recipe: Dango Jiru

There’s something about soup that the Japanese just love. It might be the simplicity of it, or the way the quality of ingredients counts, or, my fave assumption, that it’s sinfully easy to make. That’s why I make soup so often; it’s easy to make but really hard to mess up (you’ve gotta try to mess it up). I never thought that I’d like fish in soup, but after becoming so enamored with Japanese cuisine, why wouldn’t you put fish in soup? This recipe combines two of my favorite Japanese ingredients; fish and mochiko.

Dango translates to “dumpling” in Japanese. These dumplings are made using glutinous rice flour, aka, mochiko. Jiru is Japanese for “soup” . Putting the two words together literally means “dumpling soup”.

After reviewing this recipe before hand, I thought that I would change a few things to jazz it up a little. I’m a big fan of goma (sesame seeds) and love it in all sorts of Japanese dishes. I figured, why not make the dango in this recipe goma dango and add a lil’ something something to the mix. You can use goma dango or follow the original recipe; it’s up to you.

DANGO JIRU

Ingredients:

• 3 cups dashi
• 1/2 cup miso (I used aka (red) miso, but I highly recommend yellow or even white)
• 1/4 package mochi flour
• 2 stalks green onions, finely choppped
• 1 pound white fleshed fish, cut into bite sized chunks
• 1 tsp. Sesame oil, only if making goma dango
• 2 tbls. Toasted sesame seeds, only if making goma dango
• 3 dried shitake mushrooms, optional
• ¼ cup dried miatake mushrooms, optional
• 1/4 teaspoon gourmet powder (MSG, and it is optional)

Directions:

1.Slowly mix the mochiko with enough water and thoroughly knead it to make a stiff dough. (Add sesame oil and sesame seeds to the mixture at this time if using.) Roll into marble sized balls and make a slight indent on each side (I didn’t make the indents because I was lazy and it still tasted great).
2.Bring 2 cups of the dashi to a boil. Add dried mushrooms to dashi, if using, and boil for 10 more minutes. Mix the miso with the reserve dashi in a cup until the miso is dissolved and smooth, set aside.
3.Drop the balls into the miso and boil until the dango float.
4.Add the fish, MSG (if using) and miso mixture and cook an additional five-seven minutes or till fish is white and flaky.
5.Serve immediately garnished with the green onions.

Dango Jiru was a bit too salty for my tastes but then again I did use aka miso which is VERY strong. I also tempered the flavor of the soup with about a tablespoon or so of sugar. My version was satisfactory to me, other than the saltiness, but my tastes are different than other folks. I’ve also seen recipes for this soup that used shrimp, tempura fish cake, cabbage, ect. It seems like dango jiru is one of those “stone soup” recipes where the base and the dango are the only important parts of the recipe and everything else can be improvised.

I liked dango jiru because it’s:

• Easy and cheap to make
• Easy to improvise with
• Tasty if you tone down the miso

I didn’t like dango jiru because it’s:

• Too salty as is!

Difficulty: Very Easy
Time: 30 minutes
Ingredient Availability: Moderate