Kanto-Style Oden Perfect for Cold Months; Culinary Researcher Ryuta Kijima Tells How to Make the Warming Winter Dish

By Tomoyo Yamada / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

15:30 JST, February 15, 2026

Culinary researcher Ryuta Kijima has shared a recipe for Kanto-style oden, which he says is perfect to enjoy at this bitterly cold time of year.

The oden, featuring ingredients slowly simmered in a broth made from dark, mild soy sauce, warms you from within.

Oden is a dish that is symbolic of winter. “People can have different ideas about [what goes into] oden from region to region and household to household. It’s an interesting dish because people can have fun talking about their favorite ingredients,” Kijima said.

When he was growing up, Kijima ate oden made by two other culinary researchers: his grandmother, the late Akiko Murakami, and his mother, Naomi Kijima.

Although oden appeared on the family table two or three times every winter, Kijima did not like it very much, because it “did not go well with rice,” he says, laughing.

Now, he loves oden so much that he even serves it when inviting his friends to his home for drinks. “Once you’ve made the necessary preparations, you just have to slowly simmer it for a long time. I tend to keep adding ingredients to oden until I end up with a huge pot of it,” he said with a smile.

Kijima said Kanto-style oden has a salty-sweet flavor.

A key step in preparing it is thickly peeling daikon radish, the main ingredient, and rounding off the corners to help it keep its shape while simmering. Boiling the daikon before making the dish will remove its distinctive odor and improve its ability to absorb flavors.

Kijima also parboils konnyaku to remove excess moisture and unpleasant flavor. Fried fish balls and thick deep-fried tofu should also be boiled to remove excess oil. Kijima said it is precisely because oden is such a simple dish that careful preparations are able to fully bring out the flavor of the dashi broth. He advises making some extra dashi and adding it during simmering if needed.

Cooked seasonal daikon is succulent and sweet, while ingredients like thick deep-fried tofu and chikuwabu — wheat gluten in the shape of a tube — develop a deep flavor from absorbing a lot of dashi.

I even drank the dashi, infused with the flavor of the ingredients.

“You can always customize oden with your favorite ingredients. You should try things like beef tendon and octopus,” Kijima said.

Kanto-style oden

Ingredients (serves 3-4):

• 1 small daikon radish
• 1 15-centimeter-long piece of kombu kelp
• 10 grams katsuobushi dried bonito flakes
• 1 block of black konnyaku (200 grams)
• 1 chikuwa (tube-shaped fish paste cake)
• 1 chikuwabu (wheat gluten in the shape of a tube)
• 1 block of thick deep-fried tofu
• 1 pack of fried fish balls for oden (6 pieces)
• 1 hanpen fish cake
• 4 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 4 tbsp sake
• 1 tbsp mirin



Directions:

1. Cut the daikon radish into 3-centimeter-thick slices and thickly peel. Round off the edges and make a 7-8-millimeter-deep cross-shaped incision on one side.

2. Put the daikon into a pot with enough water to cover, and heat. Once it comes to a boil, simmer over low heat for 15-20 minutes.

3. Put the kombu into a different pot with 1.5 liters of water, and heat. Remove the kombu just before it comes to a boil and add the katsuobushi dried bonito flakes. Simmer on low heat for about 5 minutes.

4. Once the flakes sink, strain them out of the stock. Add dark soy sauce and sake, as well as mirin, to the stock to make simmering liquid.

5. Cut the kombu into 2-centimeter-wide strips. Tie them into knots and trim off both ends.

6. Cut the konnyaku in half, then cut diagonally to make triangles. Cut the chikuwa and chikuwabu into three equal parts and slice each diagonally.

7. Put the konnyaku into a small pot with enough water to cover, and heat. When it comes to a boil, simmer over low heat for 5 minutes.

8. Add the deep-fried tofu — cut into four equal parts — and fried fish balls to the pot of the konnyaku. Simmer for a short period of time and drain.

9. Put the drained daikon, kombu and konnyaku into a large pot. Add enough broth to cover and heat. When it comes to a boil, simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes.

10. Add the deep-fried tofu, fried fish balls, chikuwa and chikuwabu to the pot of daikon. Simmer for another 15 minutes, adding enough broth to cover the ingredients. Add the hanpen, cut into four equal parts and simmer for a short period of time.

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  The Yomiuri Shimbun
  Round off the corners of daikon radish to help it keep its shape while simmering.

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  The Yomiuri Shimbun
  Cut chikuwabu segment diagonally.

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