Yamagata Inland-Style Imoni with Frozen Taro, Iriko and Bonito — Ryuji's "Easy Version" and a Curry Udon Finish

At the start, Ryuji explains that in Yamagata there is imoni made with an excavator at imoni parties. He adds the story that the excavator used there is replaced with a new one every year. Since he has been covering Yamagata dishes one after another lately, he felt it was about time to do imoni, and that is the motivation for this episode.

Imoni varies by region, Ryuji explains: apparently the inland version is soy sauce-flavored, while the Shonai version is miso-flavored. In Yamagata, beef is used. This time he makes the inland-style, soy sauce-flavored imoni. Some recipes apparently add burdock or daikon, but here he narrows the ingredients down to a simple lineup: taro, beef, mushrooms, konnyaku and Japanese leek. He says he actually considered also doing a version starting from raw taro. That version tastes better, but he figured most people probably wouldn't make it, so he went with the easy version.

He uses 500g of frozen taro. This is the first point Ryuji emphasizes. Frozen taro has already been prepped. Raw taro can't be used until it has been peeled and parboiled once with the water discarded. If you put it in the pot raw, the broth turns gloopy. So for home cooking, frozen taro is absolutely the way to go, Ryuji says, and it's sold at supermarkets.

During the meal, the bag sizes also came up in conversation. Stores generally sell bags of about 250–300g and bags of 500g. This recipe is designed to use up one entire 500g bag. If you have a 250g bag, just halve everything. Ryuji and the staff agreed that being able to use it all up is a plus, since leftover taro tends to get forgotten in the freezer.

The beef is Australian beef belly offcuts, which he says were very cheap. Domestic beef is better, if anything, but imported beef is also really delicious, so Ryuji recommends buying whichever is cheaper. He also says that if you can get beef belly, beef belly is best. Since it's thinly sliced, it needs no prep and goes straight into the pot.

For mushrooms, since this is Yamagata, he uses maitake and hiratake (oyster mushrooms). Maitake has a very strong flavor but goes well with imoni. He chose hiratake because it has a nice texture and he likes it. He says other mushrooms can be substituted. Both are torn by hand before going in.

The konnyaku prep is kept to a minimum. Take it out of the bag and just rinse it with hot water from the tap; no parboiling. Tearing it with a spoon helps it absorb flavor. There was also a brief discussion of the black specks in konnyaku. According to Ryuji, he has heard that they're seaweed, added only as a holdover from the old days, and don't actually need to be there. But he can't say for sure, so he asked anyone knowledgeable to let him know in the comments. He added that white konnyaku also exists.

Ryuji is particular about how he handles the leek. During filming, one of the leeks he had bought was broken. On top of that, it was almost all white, with hardly any green part. Ryuji says the green part of the leek is really important in this dish. It isn't used much in the Kanto region, he notes, but you'd use the green part in udon, for example.

He cut it on the diagonal, but he says some regions cut it into chunks like the leek in yakitori. He encouraged viewers to use any green parts left over at home. Apart from the leek, there's almost no cutting involved.

Imoni has no stir-frying step; it's truly a dish where you just simmer, Ryuji explains. He also jokes that if there were a stir-frying step, you couldn't make it with an excavator.

The steps are as follows. First, put 850cc of water in the pot and add the konnyaku. He says the konnyaku can go in at any point. Next add the beef, taro and maitake. The leek doesn't go in yet.

Ryuji used to cook at a nursing home. He says he made imoni many times back then. He recalls that the elderly residents loved simmered dishes, and since it was easy to make, imoni was a very popular menu item.

Adding the beef produces quite a lot of scum, so Ryuji carefully skims it off. He himself skims after the mushrooms are in, but says the timing varies from person to person, so adjust to your preference.

When a staff member asked whether the flavor is different if you don't skim the scum, Ryuji said yes. Especially for a clear-broth imoni like this one, it's better to skim, because beef scum is strong. On the other hand, he doesn't skim pork scum much. Beef scum looks blackish and unappealing, so he removes it, while pork scum isn't as dark — that's Ryuji's explanation. This time, less scum came out than he expected.

For the seasoning, Ryuji explained his approach this time. When he looked up Yamagata imoni recipes, some added dashi, but most were seasoned with soy sauce alone. Looking into why, he learned that dashi-infused soy sauce is apparently widely used in Yamagata. Imoni made with it is apparently delicious.

He wanted to get that soy sauce, but he couldn't very well tell viewers to go buy it. So Ryuji checked its ingredient list. It contained bonito and iriko (dried sardines), so he figured that adding bonito and iriko dashi to regular soy sauce might get close to the flavor over there.

Ryuji cautions, however, that he doesn't know the community of food-loving Yamagata people, so he can't say what's really authentic. Since today's imoni is his own interpretation, he asked in advance that people not say "this isn't imoni."

The seasonings are as follows.

• Sugar: 1 tablespoon. Every source he looked at includes it, so it goes in for sweetness.
• Soy sauce: 5 tablespoons. Since this is the soy sauce version, he says this is the most important part.
• Mirin: The amount is hard to make out in the subtitles. The recipe in the description says 3 tablespoons.
• Iriko dashi (granules): 2⅓ teaspoons, about one stick packet. If you don't have iriko, kombu dashi is fine.
• Bonito powder: 2 tablespoons, about 10g (1 tablespoon is about 5g).

If you don't have bonito powder, the key is to crush bonito flakes into a powder before adding them. Added as flakes, they get stuck in your teeth. Some might wonder whether Hondashi and iriko dashi would do instead. But Ryuji answers that the flavor of real bonito is just different. As for the iriko dashi, he says he uses it because he found it really delicious.

Once the seasonings are in, cover and simmer. The heat is medium-low — about 2 on a 1–5 heat gauge. The time is roughly 15 minutes. According to Ryuji, the flavor soaks in quite well even in 15 minutes. The longer you simmer, 20 or 30 minutes, the more flavor gets into the taro, but overcooking makes the taro prone to falling apart. He gives 15–20 minutes as a guideline, 30 minutes at most.

A staff member asked whether you need to skim the scum while it simmers. Ryuji showed the pot and answered that if you skim thoroughly at the start, almost no more comes out afterward. After that, you just cover it and leave it alone. If it's this easy, it can become an everyday meal, and that's what he wanted to get across, Ryuji says. He adds that it's also good with rice, and he has a finish prepared too.

Opening the lid after 15 minutes, the taro was properly cooked and the broth was clear. Ryuji stresses that the most important thing to watch is whether the taro is cooked through.

The leek doesn't go in at the start. If it did, it would get too soft and mushy. Add it at the end and simmer for about 3 minutes. He says he followed the same steps when he made it at the nursing home. Back then, though, he used shiro dashi; lately he likes iriko, so he has switched to iriko dashi.

To finish, Ryuji tasted it and added 2 pinches of salt. He says you normally don't need to; he just did it to suit his own taste. With that, the Yamagata inland-style imoni is done.

On tasting it, Ryuji and the staff first pointed to how strong the dashi is. A staff member remarked that it seems like a Kanto-style stew but tastes Kansai-like. There was also surprise that skimming the scum just once at the start could make it this clean-tasting.

Ryuji explains that this isn't from loading it up with dashi, but because the bonito really comes through. He also mentioned that the meat isn't domestic. Even imported, belly is very delicious, he says. Ryuji loves shichimi togarashi, so partway through he sprinkles some on to change up the flavor. He says it goes well with alcohol.

Ryuji stresses that with imoni, you should go all the way to the superb finish. A good guideline is to start the finish once you've eaten about two-thirds of the imoni.

Here's how. Add about 100cc of water to the remaining broth. To make up for the dilution, add about half a teaspoon of iriko dashi. Heat 2 portions of frozen udon in the microwave for about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, add about 1½ tablespoons of curry powder, and thicken with a potato starch slurry (about 1 tablespoon of potato starch).

Lightly mash the taro left in the pot to make it easier to eat. Potatoes in curry are delicious, so there's no way taro wouldn't be, Ryuji says. Add the udon, simmer briefly, and adjust with salt depending on how much broth is left. He says this curry sauce is also delicious over rice. According to Ryuji, people in Yamagata eat it this way too.

The two who ate it said that with udon in a double broth combining seafood dashi and beef stock, there's no way it couldn't be delicious. Udon with rich beef stock is hard to find anywhere else — a flavor you can only get by making imoni, they said. Ryuji said whoever first came up with this way of eating it is a genius. The staff member, who had at first thought plain udon would be fine, was convinced that when it's made with beef, curry udon is the better choice. The two also agreed that since it has no sourness and a strong dashi flavor, people from Kansai would surely love it too.

Finally, a staff member asked whether restaurants in Yamagata serve imoni. Ryuji answered that he isn't really sure whether any restaurants serve it. His impression is that imoni is more of a home-style dish that people gather to make together. Even so, he said, newcomers like them would like to try it at a restaurant.

The video closes with an invitation to give it a try, since it's easy to make and you can enjoy it all the way through the finish. Ryuji also asked people from Yamagata to let him know in the comments if there's anything he "should do differently." The caveat that this imoni is, after all, an interpretation from outside Yamagata remains in place to the very end.