Cook Japanese zoni soup on the stove for 1 hour.
How to cook zoni
Products
For a 2-liter pan
Chicken breasts – 100 grams
Rice cakes – 4 pieces
Daikon (Japanese radish) – 200 grams
Carrots – 60 grams
Potatoes – 120 grams (4 pieces)
Fresh Chinese black mushrooms – 4 pieces
Spinach – 90 grams
Lemon zest – from 1 lemon
Dashi fish broth – 1 liter
Soy sauce – 2 teaspoons
Rice wine (sake) – 100 grams
Water – 2.5 liters
Salt – 2 teaspoons
How to cook zoni soup
1. Cut chicken breasts into medium-sized pieces.
2. Sprinkle sake chicken pieces (50 grams), grate with salt (1 teaspoon), put in boiling water (0.5 liters), cook for 1 minute.
3. Cut the daikon radish into thin rectangular slices.
4. Cut carrots into circles and cut out flowers from circles with a metal mold for cutting vegetables.
5. Peel potatoes, rinse, dip in boiling water (1 liter), add a pinch of salt, cook for 20 minutes (check readiness by removing the tuber with a spoon and piercing with a toothpick).
6. Boil the spinach in 0.5 liters of boiling water for 3 minutes, rinse with cool running water, squeeze the leaves and cut into strips 4 cm long.
7. Boil 1 liter of fish broth, add 2 teaspoons of soy sauce, 50 grams of sake, a pinch of salt, all vegetables, chicken. Boil 3 minutes.
8. Fry the rice cakes on both sides on the grill until golden brown and slightly puffy.
9. Dip rice cakes in boiling water (0.5 liters) for 20 seconds, remove with a slotted spoon, put one at a time on plates.
10. On each rice cake, place the ingredients from the soup, pour the soup.
11. Decorate the zoni soup with lemon zest carvings.
Tasty Facts
Zoni soup was originally a samurai dish. Warriors cooked it in a field kitchen from dried products and rice cakes.
Zoni soup is part of the osechi-ryori New Year’s Eve meal in Japan. Since the middle of the 15th century, rice cakes have been prepared on December 31 as an offering to the gods, and eaten on the morning of January 1 with soup. Zoni symbolizes the wishes of success and health in the coming year.
– The name “zoni” means “different, boiled together.” The ingredients of zoni vary by region of Japan, but the essential ingredients are chicken, fish, or seafood. All products are cooked separately so that the fish broth retains its taste without the taste of vegetables and meat. The ingredients for zoni can be prepared a little ahead of time and stored in covered containers until the soup is cooked.
– Chinese black mushrooms (shiitake) can be replaced with milk mushrooms, daikon radish with ordinary radish, and sake rice wine with dry white wine.