Japanese Oden Soup with fish ball

Sometimes, we are being served a piece of radish when we dine in a Japanese restaurant as a side dish. The soft, flavorful piece of radish is so delicious. Do you know it is actually easy to prepare this dish? These are actually vegetables from the oden soup.

Japanese Oden Soup is just like our "Yong Tau Fu".

Just that they use the soya sauce and kelp seaweed to act as their soup base.

This soup is enough to feed 8 pax cause by the time we add in so many ingredients, it adds up. My family of 4 usually enjoy this for 2 days.

        

Sharing how to cook oden soup with the help of this Thermal Pot. If you do not own this pot, you just need to boil an additional 45mins, after I place the soup into the outer pot.

The soup based ingredients used are very simple.

For 2.5 liters of water

Thick seaweed / kelp - 6 pieces 

My kelp is thin, so I used 6 pieces. Use less if you are using good quality thick kelp.

Oden sauce (Check out here for the recipe)

Garlic - 3 to 4 big ones.

White Onion - 1 pce

Coriander or Chinese Parsley - 1 bunch.

The greens will clear the fishy smell from the kelp. It forms an distinct flavor of the soup. Usually, this is added last to the soup in the cooking process.

I usually add 2 small chicken tight. Remove skin.
We can omit if we do not want to have meat.

For the roots and vegetables, I usually add in these must have.
Radish - 1 kg. Can use less up to our own preference.
Fuji apple - 1 unit
Holland potatoes - 2 units 
I usually buy China's holland potatoes. These are sweet and nice potatoes.

Optional items (I did not include for this meal)
Onion - 1 unit
Carrot - 1 unit. 

The taste for Oden soup mostly come from the fish cake. As it is not easy to get Japanese fish cakes, I make do with what I can get from local stores.
Konjac jelly - 1 block (I get from Donki) 
Konjac jelly is a must have item cause to us, it represents Oden dish. LOL.
Fish ball - 1 packet (We can use fish cakes etc. up to us)
Korean Fish Cake - 4 pcs. (Optional item. We can add in crab stick too)

Lets get started.
Wash, peel the skin and cut them into chunks.
For radish, we cut them into 2cm thickness.

Cut the fish cake and Konjac. 

For Konjac, I cut them into 0.5cm thickness, shaped them according. See video below on how I do it.

Place 2.5 liter of water with Kelp and garlic in the inner pot to boil.                                

Meanwhile, in another pot, place water with 1 teaspoon of salt to boil.

This is to par boil the chicken to get rid of the smell.

Place chicken into high boiling water to boil for about 5 mins in high fire.

We will transfer the chicken to the main soup pot once it is done.

Add in 

Radish

Potato

 and leave it to boil at low heat for 10 mins.

Remember to add in the oden sauce during this process so that the sauce can start to seep into the radish. Taste to see check if it is at your saltiness level.

You may add pinch of salt or more oden sauce if you prefer to have them more salty.

After 10 mins, add in 

Apple, and wolfberries (optional) and Konjac. Once the soup boil again, we can proceed to add in the fish ball and Korean fish cake.

When the soup boil again, we place in the bunch of coriander and off the fire.

Transfer the inner pot to the outer pot.

The soup will be good for eating after 1 hour.

I prefer to leave it for 2 hours to have a softer texture.

If you do not have a thermal pot, you just need to simmer the soup for another 45 mins.

ENJOY!!!