Ski Jiru: Japanese Ski Soup

The prefecture where I live, Niigata, has heavy snowfall in the winter, and accordingly, here, there are a lot of ski resorts.

Every year when wintertime comes, from various places in and outside of Japan, many skiers come to the ski areas and enjoy skiing. 

Ski Jiru (スキー汁: Ski Soup)

Ski Jiru (Ski Soup)

As for history, Joetsu City in Niigata is where the art of skiing was first transmitted from abroad by Major Theodor Edler von Lerch from Austria in 1911.

During ski training in the year 1911, a bowl of miso soup called Ski Jiru (スキー汁: Ski Soup) was served to the trainees to warm up their bodies and satisfy their hunger.

The ski soup is a variant of Ton Jiru (豚汁) pork soup, and even now, it is available in and around the Joetsu region.

vs. Ton Jiru

Ski Jiru is primarily different in ingredients from Ton Jiru.

The pork soup usually contains white potatoes, whereas the ski soup uses sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes.

Ingredients

Strictly speaking, according to the official recipe set in 1999 by the Joetsu Culinary Association Takada Branch (上越調理師協会高田支部) that reproduced the taste of the original Ski Jiru, 

the ingredients prepared for the Japanese ski soup are as follows,

  • Pork belly
  • Sweet potato 
  • Daikon radish 
  • Carrot 
  • Burdock roots
  • Tofu (bean curd)
  • Leeks 
  • Tsuki Konnyaku (thin stripes of Konnyaku)

Cooking

Using the ingredients listed above, the cooking of the Japanese ski soup is essentially the same as Ton Jiru.

But in the official recipe, carrot is supposed to be cut into rectangles like ski boards.

(Reference Pages: Wikipedia スキー汁, joetsutj.com )

Tomo

Hi, I'm Tomo, a Japanese blogger living in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. For the purpose of enriching your life, I would like to introduce things about Japan on this blog, especially unique Japanese products, cooking recipes, cultures, and facts and trivia.

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