🍲 Mettajiru (Pork Miso Soup)

“Mettajiru” is a hearty pork miso soup with plenty of ingredients; mainly root vegetables like sweet potato, daikon, and carrots. What makes this soup different from a traditional Tonjiru or pork miso soup is that it uses sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes. There are no strict rules governing which root vegetables are to be used however, so this dish is enjoyed by households all throughout the prefecture. The unique name is said to come from phrases such as “Yatara Mettara Gu Wo Ireru (Randomly add ingredients)” and “Yatara Mettara Gu Wo Kiru (Randomly cut the ingredients)”. The reason for adding so many ingredients was said to be started by farmers who wanted a way to use up the large quantity of vegetables that had been harvested. In his representative work “Kabi”, announced in 1894 by Shusei Tokuda; a renowned literary of the prefecture, there is a scene depicting the main character and their friends preparing and eating Mettajiru. The sweet potatoes which are also used in Mettarjiru are recognized to be a part of the “Kaga Yasai” brand vegetables promoted by the city of Kanazawa. There is a long history of cultivating sweet potato in the city of Kanazawa, as it is said the seed potato and method of cultivation was introduced from Satsuma near the end of the Genroku period. By 1877, the area had become a full-fledged production center of the product and by 1938, over 100 tons of early dug sweet potatoes had been shipped to cities like Kyoto, Hikone, Osaka, Tsuruga, and Kobe. In 1977, following the introduction of curing storage (a method of mass storage under conditions of high heat and humidity), the sweet potato had become one of the main vegetables of the sand dune regions of northern Kanazawa.