Korea and Japan · Volume 54, The Kingdom, the Battle and the Base

Nakami-jiru

Name: Nakami-jiru
Total time: 2 h
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands
Ingredients: 500 g pork small intestine, large intestine and stomach, mixed; 2 tbsp rice bran, or wheat flour; 1 litre bonito and pork dashi; 1 tsp salt, soy sauce to taste salt and light soy sauce, to taste; for garnish spring onion, finely sliced, to finish

Okinawa

Nakami-jiru, clear pork offal soup: a wide shallow bowl of pale, perfectly clear broth with thin springy strips of pork offal suspended in it, a few rings of spring onion floating on the surface.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: 2 hours

Researched: Researched from 85 sources in the brief, none yet linked in the text
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

Nakami-jiru is one of the surviving named dishes of the kingdom's own court kitchen, made from pork small intestine, large intestine and stomach, and its whole technical point is texture rather than offal flavour: repeated washing and boiling with rice bran or wheat flour strips away fat and odour before the offal ever meets the clear broth it is served in.

by Okinawa

The Ryukyu Kingdom's foreign relations rested on investiture and tribute (冊封・進貢) with Ming and then Qing China: the Chinese emperor conferred legitimacy on the Ryukyuan king, and in return Ryukyu sent tribute missions bearing gifts and receiving trade goods, holding unusually favoured status among China's tributaries, permitted annual missions others were not (Japan Heritage portal). Chinese investiture envoys, sappōshi, arrived as delegations of 400 to 500 people who stayed six to eight months at a time, and feeding a party that size is directly credited by the Japanese Cabinet Office's own reversion-history page with driving the kingdom's entire pork economy: those missions are recorded as consuming roughly twenty pigs a day, a demand so large the kingdom sourced extra animals from Amami and Okinoerabu to meet it (Cabinet Office). Southeast Asian trade, Siam above all, is credited across Okinawan sources with bringing distillation technology into the kingdom in the late fourteenth or fifteenth century, the root of awamori, discussed in full below. This was not incidental contact. It was the kingdom's actual foreign policy, and its kitchens were built to entertain it: a court cuisine, okansen ryōri, developed specifically to host these missions, with seven grand state banquets serving over thirty Chinese-style dishes each, the kingdom sending its own cooks to China to train, food served on vermilion Ryukyu lacquerware at purpose-built villas such as Shikinaen (Japan Heritage portal). Kippan, the candied-citrus sweet now sold as an everyday souvenir, chinsuko biscuits, nakami-jiru and tofuyo all trace their lineage directly to this court kitchen, only reaching ordinary tables after the kingdom's fall scattered its chefs into civilian life.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 2 hours, mostly cleaning and pre-boiling.

Ingredients

500 g pork small intestine, large intestine and stomach, mixed
2 tbsp rice bran, or wheat flour
1 litre bonito and pork dashi
1 tsp salt, soy sauce to taste salt and light soy sauce, to taste
for garnish spring onion, finely sliced, to finish

Method

Wash the pork small intestine, large intestine and stomach thoroughly in several changes of cold water, then rub with the rice bran or flour, working it into every fold and crevice, and rinse again; repeat this washing and rubbing two or three times, since this repeated mechanical cleaning, not any later seasoning, is what removes the fat and smell the dish depends on being free of.
Boil the cleaned offal for 5 minutes in fresh water, drain, and repeat once more.
Slice into thin, bite-sized strips.
Bring the dashi to a gentle simmer, add the cleaned offal, and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes until tender with a light, springy chew, not soft or falling apart.
Season lightly with salt and a little soy sauce; the broth should stay clear and delicate.
Finish with spring onion.

What a modern chef changes

The offal poached sous vide, and the broth clarified with a classic consommé raft

Rung 3

Method

The cleaned offal is poached sous vide at 75°C for 3 hours rather than simmered directly in the broth (Rung 3, extended). This holds the offal at a precisely controlled temperature well below a rolling simmer, giving an even, consistently tender chew across every piece without any risk of the toughening a fluctuating stovetop simmer can cause.
The broth is clarified using a classic consommé raft technique, egg white and minced lean pork whisked through the finished dashi and gently simmered until it draws the stock's own impurities to the surface, then strained through a chinois, giving a crystal-clear broth beyond what straining alone achieves, a genuine, named technique transfer that suits this dish's whole point better than any other in the chapter, since nakami-jiru's own tradition already prizes clarity and clean texture over richness.
The bonito component of the dashi is shaved fresh from a whole block immediately before use, rather than using pre-shaved flakes, for a noticeably cleaner, less oxidised flavour in a broth this delicate.
The finishing spring onion is dehydrated to a fine, crisp powder and dusted over the surface at the very last moment, rather than left as fresh slices, adding aromatic lift without disturbing the broth's own clarity.

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