My Slow Cooker Repertoire #2 - Oden (Japanese Hotchpotch) -

Oden -- the "must have" in winter They say it’s going to be a very cold winter this year. I’m very happy that I have a slow cooker now! :D Here’s another dish I made with slow cooker: Oden (Japanese hotchpotch). Nutrition-wise, this may not be an excellent dish, because many of the steamed fish-cake products in cheap “oden-kit” I used this time seem to have good amount of additives and preservatives, and not many vegetables are included in this dish except daikon and potatoes. But this is just a comfort food that we have to have in winter. The ingredients this time were: ・kelp ・potatoes ・mochi iri kinchaku ・boiled eggs ・daikon ・ganmodoki (deep-fried tofu product) ・assortment of steamed/grilled fish cakes ・konnyaku (see the gray triangles in the photos) ・gyu-suji (beef tendon) on skewers This site has a good explanation of oden and its ingredients (Scroll down). To add to the info. on that site, mochi-iri kinchaku -- the one that looks like a small bag tied with a strip -- is rice cake wrapped in abura-age (deep-fried thin tofu). My absolute favorite. ;) If you’re interested, here’s a couple of tips for making tasty oden that I learned from a TV program called “Mega ten” several years ago. ・Some ingredients (fish cake products, kelp, tendon, etc.) make good broth, and some (daikon, eggs, potatoes, tofu-products) absorb broth well. Use both types of ingredients in a good balance. ・It is recommended to use konnyaku, if available. Though rather tasteless itself, it makes other ingredients in oden tastier. (The calcium hydroxide used to coagulate konnyaku is said to work on fish-cake products and make them more chewy and tasty.) To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think the fish-cake products tasted any better when cooked in a slow cooker... at least, I couldn't tell the difference. But the potatoes and daikon!! They tasted definitely better!! Oh it was soooo heavenly. :D