Introducing the recipe for Yamakake Udon featured in Volume 2 of Demon Slayer.
When it comes to traditional noodle dishes in Japan, soba and udon are often mentioned, but udon has a history for a thousand years.
Udon can be enjoyed on its own, but it is also commonly topped with various toppings.
Among those toppings, honestly, Yamakake (sometimes called “tororo”) is not so popular.
It’s not that it’s not delicious, but there aren’t many places that offer it, and it probably wouldn’t make it into the top 10 udon toppings. In Demon Slayer, this udon dish that appears may seem like a mysterious food to overseas fans. In this article, I will introduce Yamakake Udon itself and its recipe.
What is Yamakake Udon?
Yamakake Udon is a dish that consists of udon noodles topped with grated Japanese Yam (or Mountain Yam). This yam has a very sticky texture.
In Japan, there is a preference for such sticky foods, including natto and okra, and Yamakake Udon is one of the representative dishes in that category.
The taste of Yamakake Udon is quite difficult to compare to foreign foods. It’s hard to describe, but the flavor itself is not particularly strong. Instead, it is more about enjoying the texture of the dish.
Recipe
It’s not particularly complicated. All you need to do is grate the Japanese yam.
The key is whether you can get your hands on the Japanese yam or not. There are several articles suggesting that you can find it at Asian or Japanese grocery stores.
For detailed instructions in English, please refer to the following link. The linked video demonstrates making the dish starting from the soup, but if you can get “Mentsuyu”, you can easily make the soup. it is a concentrated sauce made from dashi (broth) and soy sauce. Additionally, you can simply use frozen or dried udon noodles, which can be boiled in hot water (even in Japanese households, it’s rare for people to make udon from scratch using flour).
[Link] (Please refer to the link for detailed instructions in English)
