New Year’s is a major holiday in Japan and has been for centuries. Shogatsu, as the Japanese New Year’s is known, retains many traditions from former times which are still alive today and a fixture in modern New Year’s happenings. These traditions can be small, intimate ceremonies practiced with the family or in private. For three days the Japanese celebrate the New Year and enjoy traditional New Year’s foods, osechi ryori, aka osechi, which have been prepared or purchased before the festivities.
Some of the foods eaten include nimono (simmered vegetables), kazunoko (herring roe), kurikinton (mashed chestnuts and sweet potatoes), datemaki (sweetened omelet roll), kamaboko (fish cake) and konnyaku (gelatinous yam cake). But the one dish which is famous as New Year’s food is ozoni.
The morning of the first day of New Year’s, people will drink sake and eat ozoni, the traditional soup of New Year’s. This soup has many variations and no one can agree on any one ozoni recipe as the “official” ozoni recipe. However, no matter what’s added, subtracted or left out of an ozoni recipe, the one thing which makes ozoni, ozoni, is mochi.
Mochi is another celebrated New Year’s food and is even featured as a New Year’s decoration, the kagami mochi. Pieces of toasted mochi cake are added to ozoni as part of a hearty meal.
I decided to make ozoni this year and have listed what I used in my own rendition of this traditional soup. I’ve listed ingredient variations so you can personalize ozoni for your own New Year’s celebrations.
Rae’s Ozoni
- 6 cups dashi or veggie stock
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 8 shitake, fresh
- 2 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
- konnyaku
- kamaboko, sliced
- nappa cabbage, thinly sliced
- 8 shrimp balls
- 1 cup shrimp, cooked
- 4 mochi, sliced into thirds
- green onions, finely sliced
1. Boil the dashi, or stock, and soy sauce in a large pot. Remove stems from the shitake and add them to the dashi. Simmer on low for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove the shitake stems.
2. Add carrots and shitake caps to stock. Simmer on low for 10 minutes.
3. Slice konnyaku into strips, or for a decorative effect, slice a strip of konnyaku in the center and pull one end of the konnyaku through the slit. Add to stock and boil for an additional 10 minutes.
4. Toast mocho thirds in the oven on broil till they’re puffy and golden brown. Set aside.
5. In bottom of a bowl, add shrimp balls, shrimp, nappa cabbage, and 2 mochi thirds. Carefully ladle broth and simmered vegetables into the bowl. Top with green onions. Serve immediately.
Variant Ingredients
This sounds great. I also like having kani zoni with rice inside in the winter.
trying to reach Earl Goodman III
@Earl Goodman III, mmmm, kani zoni. Kani’s so yummy in soup!
Looks good, but how many does it serve?
@molly, arrrggh! I forgot to put the serving size! It makes about 4 servings if you ladle two cups of stock into each bowl and serve with two shitake mushrooms and a mochi cake per bowl. Or you could divvy it up to make 6 one cup servings and divide the mochi pieces as best you can. We both had two heaping bowls apiece and had two cups of stock leftover. We like to pile the goodies on pretty thick at our house so plan to have more mochi cakes and fillings if you’re like us!