There are dishes you plan for and dishes that simply appear when the temperature drops. Oden is the latter.
If you're trying to explain oden, describing it as a Japanese stew is the quickest way. But this isn’t a thick, aggressively spiced stew - it works more subtly, coaxing flavor from the ingredients as it simmers, then infusing them with the souped-up broth.
This one-pot dish is built on dashi soup stock, often awase dashi made from kombu and katsuobushi, then seasoned with soy sauce, sake, mirin and salt.
Into that broth go thick rounds of daikon radish, triangles of konnyaku, boiled eggs, tofu in various forms and a procession of fish-paste products such as chikuwa and hanpen.
Oden sits high in the ranks of Japanese comfort food because it manages to do several things at once:
- It fills you up without weighing you down.
- It makes a little protein and a few vegetables feel abundant.
- It scales up easily.
- It improves as it sits. Reheat leftovers the next day and you'll understand why people love oden.
Most importantly, it offers a rare pleasure: a dish where the main ingredient isn't a single star item but the broth itself. Filling even the blandest of ingredients with flavor, oden broth is where the story gathers.
If you've ever eaten daikon that tastes like nothing and wondered why it bothered showing up, oden is its redemption arc.
Where To Find Oden
Oden specialty restaurants: also known as oden-ya, these tend to be small eateries.
Izakaya: where oden shows up on the menu as the ideal partner to drinks.
Street stalls and oden carts: historically, oden belonged to the streets.
Convenience stores: bringing simmered daikon to a store near you.
And then there is the home version. A hot pot on the stove is a statement that winter has arrived and you intend to enjoy it.
A History of Oden: A Dance and Dish Called Dengaku
Oden may be old but it did not always look the way it does now. Its roots lie in dengaku, which began as a performance form before it became food.
The word 'dengaku' originally referred to music and dance performed during rice planting season as a prayer for a good harvest.
Later, tofu cut into rectangles, skewered and grilled came to be called dengaku, supposedly because the shape resembled the dancers - a comparison best appreciated after a few drinks.
Topped with miso, this grilled tofu dengaku spread widely and became a popular food in medieval Japan.
A name invented by court women
So how did 'dengaku' become 'oden'?
One oft-cited explanation is that the name comes from nyobo kotoba, the women's language used by court ladies and female attendants as a kind of code.
The honorific 'o' was added to 'dengaku' and the latter part dropped, creating the word, oden.
Fast food, skewers and the street
The dengaku version of oden continued to evolve. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Edo - pre-modern Tokyo - became one of the world's most populous cities, with most of its residents living alone in tiny spaces.
Dining out boomed and skewered dengaku rode the wave, embraced by street vendors as enthusiastically as a cabbage roll hugging a core of cheese.
Fast and tasty, dengaku was something you could buy and eat without ceremony - its range expanded to include fish, eggplant, taro and konnyaku.
But researchers are still divided over when simmered oden became mainstream. Some say that it emerged only in the late 19th century.
Others argue that, with the development of soy-sauce production in nearby places such as Choshi and Noda - both in present-day Chiba prefecture - a simmered style of oden could have been invented even earlier.
Broth becomes the main event
A key turning point came a year after Edo was renamed Tokyo. In 1887, a shop near the Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo), began selling oden simmered in abundant broth.
This version was a hit and spread west from the Kanto region to Kansai, where it was labeled kanto-daki - Kanto-style simmer - to distinguish it from the miso-based dengaku skewers.
Oden specialty shops sprung up and, in an age-old tradition of oneupmanship, Kansai chefs set about refining the dish.
Add the remaining ingredients: Homes, combini and new-style oden
Up until the late 1940s, oden was something you ate outside the home. But as the economy recovered after World War II, premade ingredients such as fish cakes began to be sold widely. This, together with the introduction of soup base products, made it easier to assemble a pot of oden.
By the 1960s, oden was popping up in surveys of hot-pot dishes served at home and it continues to do well in the rankings.
From the 1980s, oden came to be sold at convenience stores - first as a winter item then as something available year-round.
But concerns about hygiene and food waste have led to a move from open warming units to single-serving retort pouches.
The dish itself keeps evolving: new styles include vegetable-heavy and regional variations as well as summer oden, where the broth is chilled or served in gelee form.
This is how a national comfort food survives: it stays recognizable but refuses to fossilize.
From Chikuwa to Cheese: Different Types of Oden Ingredients
When ordering oden or making it at home, it helps to understand the line-up in two broad groups: classic ingredients and those that an Edo ojisan wouldn't recognize.
Classic oden ingredients
Daikon: these thick radish rounds are repeatedly ranked as a top oden ingredient.
Konnyaku: made from the konjac yam, the rubbery texture may be challenging for newcomers but its high fiber content helps with digestion - and it works well with low-carb diets.
Boiled eggs: peeled and added early so the whites take on color and the broth becomes part of the bite.
Kombu: often tied (musubi kombu) and soaked, adding ocean depth and a pleasantly chewy texture. If you can't find the knots in a Japanese grocery store, you can make them from scratch by rehydrating dried kombu, cutting it into strips and tying them into knots.
Tofu family: atsuage (thick fried tofu), aburaage (fried tofu pouch), ganmodoki (fried tofu fritter with vegetables). These act like sponges for soup stock.
Mochi kinchaku: mochi tucked into a fried tofu pouch.
Different types of fish cakes: Nerimono is the umbrella term for surimi fish paste that has been shaped and cooked in different ways: steamed, grilled, boiled or deep-fried. Popular forms include satsuma-age (deep-fried fish cakes), chikuwa (fish cake tubes sometimes stuffed with burdock) and hanpen - pale fish cakes so soft they're practically clouds.
Outside Japan, your best oden option may be an assorted pack of nerimono. If there's a Japanese food store or well-stocked Asian grocery store in your orbit, see if you can find an oden set there: this is one of the most efficient ways to get variety without buying 10 separate packages.
More unusual oden ingredients
Oden is flexible enough to welcome ingredients that seem to have wandered in from other meals.
Cabbage rolls: stuffed with ground meat and cheese, cabbage rolls become a mini umami bomb the moment the cheese starts to melt.
Takoyaki: adding octopus balls marks the marriage of two street-food staples - and once you’ve tried it, going back to broth-less takoyaki may feel like a downgrade.
Tomatoes: added later so they keep their shape; they tint the broth with acidity.
Sausages: common in modern oden pots and familiar to anyone who has bought oden at a convenience store. When it comes to adding flavor to your broth, this is the unlikely hero.
Cheese: try topping the other ingredients with sliced or shredded cheese just before they finish simmering or before eating.
Make Oden at Home
Using this recipe as a base, experiment with the ingredients introduced above and adjust the seasoning to your liking.
Oden recipe (makes about 4 servings)
Ingredients
Daikon: 1/2 to 2/3 of the radish, depending on size
Konnyaku: 1 block
Musubi kombu (tied kombu): 4 pieces
Boiled eggs: 4
Your preferred oden ingredients (sausages, deep fried fish cakes etc)
Water: 5 cups
Soy sauce: 2 tbsp
Sake: 2 tbsp
Mirin: 2 tbsp
Granulated bonito dashi: 1 tbsp
Salt: a pinch
Method
Cut the daikon into 2 cm-thick rounds. Because daikon takes time to soften, pre-cook it in a pressure cooker or a regular pot. Bevel the edges of the daikon rounds (mentori) so the flavor is absorbed evenly and the rounds keep their shape while simmering.
(Shortcut option: Skip the pre-cooking by slicing the daikon into very thin rounds - about 1 mm - and cooking it directly in the pot with the other oden ingredients.)
Blanch the konnyaku to remove its smell. Place it on a chopping board and pound it once or twice with your fist to soften it. Score the surface diagonally on both sides so broth can enter, then cut it into triangles.
Soak the tied kombu in hot water for about 5 minutes.
If you're using deep-fried ingredients such as satsuma-age fish cakes, blanch them quickly in boiling water to remove the excess oil, then drain. (This keeps the broth cleaner.) Score the thicker items to help broth absorption.
Build the oden broth. Put the water, soy sauce, sake, mirin and granulated bonito dashi in a big pot and bring to a boil. If you have a donabe, use it: earthenware holds heat steadily, which suits a simmered dish like oden.
Taste the broth and add a pinch of salt as needed.
Start simmering the long-cook ingredients. Add the daikon, konnyaku, tied kombu and boiled eggs. Simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes.
Add the ingredients that need less time. Keep the heat gentle: avoid a hard boil that can cloud the soup and break delicate items.
Serve hot, with karashi mustard on the side and maybe some warmed sake.
Note: For a fuss-free broth, combine 5 cups of water with 3 tablespoons of shiro dashi soup base and 3 tablespoons of mentsuyu dipping sauce, then adjust with salt.
Timing Guide: When to Add the Ingredients for Oden
One of the keys to good oden is mastering the simmering times. Here's a guide to cooking up the various ingredients in a big pot of oden:
Add at the start
Daikon and konnyaku: start early; they are famously slow to absorb broth.
Boiled eggs: add early so the broth seasons them thoroughly.
Kombu (tied): soak the dried knots in water for about 30 minutes, or in hot water for about 5 minutes, then add to the pot.
Potatoes, taro: handle gently so they keep their shape.
Beef tendon: only after proper pre-boiling; let it simmer long enough to turn silky.
Squid: parboil in water for about 30 seconds then add to the pot. Once you do, don't raise the heat suddenly as this will make the squid tough.
Octopus: Tenderize by pounding it with a stick then parboil before adding it to the pot.
Add mid-simmer
Atsuage, ganmodoki, grilled tofu: remember to blanch them before adding them to the pot.
Shirataki: use knotted bundles so they don’t tangle.
Chikuwabu: not to be confused with chikuwa, these wheat-based tubes are popular in the Kanto region. Adjust the timing depending on whether you want them chewier or softer.
Mochi kinchaku: long cooking can make the mochi too soft.
Add near the end
Hanpen: prone to breaking up - watch out for overcooking.
Most fish cakes and oden set items: add late and simmer gently, usually 7-10 minutes total for nerimono, depending on size.
Shumai dumplings: add late so the wrappers don’t go mushy.
Tomatoes: add late so they keep their shape.
Add as a finishing move (after most of the ingredients are gone)
Takoyaki: surprisingly good as a late addition.
Udon or rice: a smart way to turn leftover oden broth into a second meal.
Make the Oden with Care, Season it with Time
Prep matters more than fancy ingredients. Mentori on the daikon, blanching deep-fried items and scoring the ingredients - yes, even the sausages - are not fussy rituals. They make the difference between 'broth around ingredients' and 'ingredients that have become broth'.
The items in an oden pot look modest until you bite into them and realize that they have been taking on flavor for an hour, then another, then overnight, as if time itself were the seasoning.
Of all the food in Japan, this is one dish you have to try.
By Janice Tay