Cheese Kamaboko: Fish Cake Snack with Cheese Bits

Kamaboko is a traditional Japanese food with about 900 years of history. It is a steamed or baked fish cake made with whitefish meat, sugar, salt, mirin sweet cooking rice wine, and egg white.

Typical whitefish used in the Kamaboko cake are cod, shark, lizardfish, and wrasse, and in addition to these ingredients, starch is also added as an auxiliary material.

Traditionally, formed into an arched shape, the Japanese fish cake Kamaboko comes on a small wooden plate.

In modern times, there are many variations of Kamaboko, from plain to flavored, and those products can be bought at almost any supermarket and convenience store since Kamaboko is a very common food here in Japan.

Kamaboko goes very well with alcoholic beverages, and in fact, we Japanese love to eat the fish cake as an “Otsumami (おつまみ)” snack along with Sake rice wine or beer.

Cheese Kamaboko (Chiikama)

Among various types of Kamaboko products, today, flavored Kamaboko is especially popular, which is usually formed into a stick shape without using a small wooden plate.

When we Japanese think of flavored Kamaboko, what comes to many people’s mind is probably Cheese Kamaboko, which is a cheese-flavored, cheese-bits-embedded Kamaboko fish cake.

As with traditional Kamaboko cakes, we love to eat Cheese Kamaboko while drinking beer.

Natori Cheese Kamaboko

Actually now, I have a package of Cheese Kamaboko for this blog article. The product shown above is Cheese Kamaboko from “Natori (なとり)”, a Japanese food company well-known for the Cheese Tara fish cheese snack.

Maruzen Chiikama

In addition to Natori, the food maker “Maruzen (丸善)” is also well recognized in Japan for its Cheese Kamaboko whose product is dubbed “Chiikama (チーかま)”.

Features

The product from Natori contains 4 sticks of Cheese Kamaboko fish cake in the package, each of which is individually wrapped in a plastic film.

As you can see in the picture above, and as I mentioned above, Cheese Kamaboko has half-dried cheese bits embedded throughout the fish cake.

Fish Ingredients

According to the description on the back of the package, the fish ingredient in this Cheese Kamaboko from Natori consists of codfish and lizardfish.

Taste

In general, Cheese Kamaboko has a firm, smooth texture and is lightly seasoned. It is not fishy at all and really easy to eat. This Cheese Kamaboko from Natori has rich-tasting processed cheese bits inside and matches perfectly with beer.