Eating Diary♪ 3

Part 3

Yakiniku and Horumon Nabe

Since my relatives gathered at my parents' house for the Obon holiday, we all went to Koshuraku, a yakiniku restaurant that uses fresh offal, to eat 'Tagawa Horumon Nabe' for the first time in a while. You know, that thing that was in the B-1 Grand Prix.
It is a dish served at yakiniku and horumon restaurants in the Tagawa city area, organized by a group called 'Tagawa Horumon Club.' It is a style of hot pot cooking that spread after the end of the war in places like the Chikuho coal mines, the Kitakyushu industrial zone, and various Japanese National Railways engine depots, where beef offal and vegetables are cooked together with miso or soy sauce.

At the restaurant that day, we started with the usual 'loin,' 'mino' (tripe), 'kalbi' (short ribs), and 'horumon' (offal) as yakiniku, and after having our fill with things like 'stone-grilled bibimbap' and 'Korean cold noodles,' we moved on to the 'horumon nabe'.
It was unusual to have 'spinach' on top that day, but it was delicious regardless, so that's fine.

What makes it different from motsunabe is the use of a slightly concave, flat stainless steel pot. Just like with motsunabe, you lay the offal in the pot, top it with vegetables, and wait for it to cook before you start eating, but the seasoning is closer to yakiniku sauce. In that sense, the taste is a bit different from motsunabe, and it is a pan-cooked dish after all.

In the end, we were stuffed after finishing with both champon noodles and udon noodles.
This restaurant uses 'fresh offal' that hasn't been frozen, and it's well-washed and properly prepped, so there's no gamey smell and the flavor is gentle. Since the owner is a woman, the seasoning is mild, giving this horumon nabe an elegant taste. It's a long-standing, independent shop that does things with care. It was delicious.

When I was a child, the old style still remained. Because the smell of raw beef offal (we called it 'tonchan'...) was strong, it was prepared with garlic, ginger, and chili peppers to mask or eliminate that smell, and then soy sauce or miso was added as ingredients. Oh, and we would mix onions, cabbage, and chives together in a bag, knead them well, and then grill them on an iron plate. At home, that is.

At work sites, they would turn a cement bag inside out and pour the 'tonchan,' which had been seasoned along with those vegetables, into the bag fashioned into a pot shape. Then, they would put the whole bag on a charcoal grill and, through heat convection, cook the 'tonchan' inside the cement bag—which strangely doesn't burn—while sipping shochu... that was the style. I think its simplicity, like 'men's cooking,' was one of the reasons it caught on.

It seems it was a preference for only a few people before the war, but after the food shortages right after the war, it spread among workers in places like the Chikuho coal mines for reasons like 'tasty, cheap, highly nutritious, goes well with alcohol, easy to make even outdoors, full of rustic charm, etc.' It is thought to have spread from the Kyushu railway network to the staff at various engine depots who did physically demanding work. Since it was also eaten at places like the 'Takanabe Engine Depot' in Miyazaki, I speculate—or perhaps imagine—that maybe the steam locomotive engineers from around the 'Nogata Engine Depot' passed it on, saying, 'This is great!'

Similar horumon nabe dishes exist, scattered across the country in mining towns and factory towns, each changing its appearance little by little. They all have strong seasoning, which is irresistible when paired with ice-cold beer after a tiring day.
By the way, I have been to 'Kamehachi Shokudo' in Kameyama City, Mie Prefecture, and had their 'Kameyama Horumon Nabe,' which was truly delicious right down to the udon noodles at the end. It was very similar and delicious.