Oden: the winter pot that never seems to empty

Every autumn in Japan there is a moment when oden (おでん) quietly reappears. In convenience stores up and down the country, a steaming metal tray takes its place beside the register, divided into compartments of bobbing daikon, eggs and fish cakes. The air near the counter picks up a soft smell of soy and dashi. Winter, it announces, has a plan.

Oden is a pot of assorted ingredients simmered slowly in a seasoned broth, then fished out one piece at a time. It is not quite a soup and not quite a stew. On a cold night, it is better than both.

What goes in the pot

The joy of oden is choosing. Every pot is an assortment, and part of the pleasure is picking your own favourites. Some of the classics:

• Daikon (大根): thick rounds of white radish simmered until translucent and soaked through with broth. For many people, this is the heart of oden.
• Eggs (卵): hard-boiled and simmered until the whites turn tan.
• Konnyaku (こんにゃく): a firm, bouncy jelly made from the konjac plant, often cut into triangles. It tastes of very little itself and is all about texture and the broth it carries.
• Chikuwa (ちくわ): a tube of grilled fish paste, hollow in the middle.
• Hanpen (はんぺん): a pale, fluffy square of fish cake, light as a marshmallow, which puffs up in the broth.
• Ganmodoki (がんもどき): deep-fried tofu fritters studded with vegetables, which soak up broth like a sponge.
• Gyusuji (牛すじ): beef tendon, usually on skewers, cooked until meltingly soft.

You will also see mochi tucked inside fried tofu pouches, knots of kombu, potatoes, fried fish cakes in all sorts of shapes and, in Tokyo, chikuwabu (ちくわぶ), a chewy wheat-dough tube that looks like chikuwa but contains no fish at all.

On the side there is almost always karashi (からし), a sharp yellow Japanese mustard. Dab a little on a piece of daikon and the heat cuts neatly through the sweetness.

A broth with regional moods

Oden is built on dashi, but each region seasons it in its own way.

Kanto style, around Tokyo, uses dashi seasoned with soy sauce, giving a darker, more assertive broth. This is the version most people picture.

Kansai style, around Osaka and Kyoto, is generally lighter in colour, leaning on kombu and light-coloured soy sauce so the ingredients keep their own colours. Intriguingly, oden in Kansai has long been called kanto-daki (関東煮), usually understood as "Kanto-style simmering", a name you may still hear. Beef tendon is a particular favourite there.

Shizuoka oden is the most distinctive of all. Its broth is very dark, traditionally built up over time with beef tendon and dark soy sauce, and every item is served on a skewer. Before eating, you sprinkle it with dashi powder made from ground dried fish, along with aonori, flakes of green seaweed. Look out for kuro hanpen (黒はんぺん), a grey fish cake made with sardines that is a local signature.

Nagoya brings its love of dark soybean miso to the pot. Miso oden there may be simmered in a rich miso broth or served with a thick, sweet miso sauce for dipping. If you have read our guide to miso types, you will recognise the influence.

Where to eat it

Oden turns up in very different settings, and each has its own charm.

• Convenience stores: from autumn into winter, many keep a pot by the register. You choose your pieces, either serving yourself with tongs or asking the staff, add broth to the cup, and take a packet of karashi. It is the most democratic oden there is.
• Oden specialists and izakaya: dedicated oden restaurants keep long-simmered pots behind the counter, usually with sake or beer close at hand. Here oden becomes an evening rather than a snack.
• Street stalls: oden is a natural fit for yatai (屋台), the open-air food stalls, where a steaming pot draws people in from the cold. Fukuoka's yatai are the most famous place to find them.

A gentle tip for counters: order a few pieces at a time rather than everything at once. The pot is the point, and you can always ask for more as you go. Daikon and egg make a good first round if you are unsure; they show off the broth better than anything.

A name borrowed from another dish

The word itself has a small history. Oden is usually traced to dengaku (田楽), tofu grilled with a miso glaze: add the polite prefix "o", shorten the rest, and you have o-den. Over time, the simmered version became so popular that it took over the name. Nagoya's miso oden, in a way, keeps a thread back to those miso-glazed roots.

What I love most about oden is its patience. The pot is never rushed, and nothing in it is fancy. Radish, eggs, a bit of fish paste, all made better by time and warm broth. On a cold evening, there are few better reminders that comfort is often just ordinary food given the time to become itself.