I must say, I couldn’t detect shiro (white) miso in the Okinawan Festival’s version, but more ginger, which I noticed your recipe has none of. You sure you didn’t leave that out?

Marukai sells Togan, but only the whole thing, which is BIG, like a medium-sized watermelon. That’s fine though, as I think when you make Pig’s Feet soup, it’s best to make it in large quantity anyway. I really do enjoy the Daikon in this soup, as it has that “bite”, and it absorbs the flavor of the pig’s feet broth beautifully.

With all the great-sounding recipes recommended here so far, I guess I have nothing to do but work my way back, starting with yours.

This is perfect chilly weather for a hot bowl of Ashitibichi!

Water
Hawaiian Salt (or sea salt)
seaweed (Konbu), soaked then tied in bow ties
shiitake
pig feet with hocks AND fat
winter squash (Togan, Chinese Winter Melon, really important), large pieces
white miso (really important)

Generously salt some water, add pig feet and hocks, and boil. Keep skimming for the first half-hour or so. Then add Konbu and shiitake. Boil until the feet are soft, about 2-1/2 hours. Add the squash and cook for another 1/2 to 1 hour for squash to get soft and begin to melt. Bring soup to a rolling simmer. Ladle some both in a bowl and mix with miso. Strain the mixture into the soup, stir vigorously but don’t break up the feet too much. Then serve hot.

It’s important to have a good amount of fat on the feet/hocks. Also, this soup MUST be made with Togan (Winter Mellon Squash) and, in my opinion, miso. The SQUASH is the Star of this soup, and the skin and fat characteristics of the hocks separate this soup from an ordinary pork bone soup, making it like no other.

Cheers.

http://hwnpakeokinawa.blogspot.com/

When it’s oden they call it oden.

When it’s ashitebichi it’s the plain tebichi shiru.

There’s a simple salted pork stock in Chinese cuisine which looks a lot like the soup you’re trying to create. I’ve been trying to make it for a while. It’s hard. The simple recipes leave the greatest room for error.

To note, I already ate all those S&S bowls of Pig’s Feet Soup. I tell you, nothing like being able to reach in the freezer and grab one of those bad boys on your way out to work. My Uchinanchu coworker immediately recognized the smell of the soup, mostly because of the pig’s feet and daikon. Oishii desu!

I told him I’d make a pot to share the next time, when (or if) I perfect the dish.

As for singing the pig’s feet over an open flame, I notice some rafute (Okinawan Shoyu Pork) recipes also calls for that procedure. But I think that’s an “old school” method, needed when you’re dealing with self-slaughtered pigs that need to be cleaned further (still have hair and dirt on the skin, whatever).

The one from this past year’s Okinawan Festival didn’t have much of a shoyu or even dashi flavor. Mostly just the pig’s feet (very “porky”) and GINGER. Very “gingery”, which I love for its medicinal factor.

Auntie Lynn aka Auntie Pupule

If you tasted the Okinawan Pig’s Feet Soup at the festival, it did taste almost like a Chinese Pork Soup. The light color and the taste of the soup is indicative that whoever made it used very little shoyu which would have darken the color of the soup.

The other versions of this soup I have eaten, have a dashi which in taste is most similar to the Ozoni Soup my family would have at the neighbor’s open house every New Year.

I agree that Pomai’s sounds a lot better, but Pomai said he wanted to replicate the soup he had at the festival. I have made Okinawan Pig’s Feet Soup myself flavoring it with dashi, mirin and shoyu. The most delicious recipe I have tried, says to finish the cooked pig’s feet by sauteing it and coloring it with a little shoyu before pouring the strained dashi over it.

BTW, all the versions of this soup I have had in Okinawan homes usually have gobo, hasu, shiitake, kamaboko, knotted konbu and daikon, besides mustard cabbage and togan.

The recipe I posted earlier is from the Okinawan Prefectural Government.

As you say, yours is more like oden, which is OK if you like it. It is tasty to add other things as I sometimes do. But true Okinawan ashi tebichi is pure and simple.

Here are links.

http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/026/e/

http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/026/index.html

The ”e” one is English, but to get the actual recipes you got to go to the other site, in Japanese. Lots of other favorite Okinawan soups.

Yours looks much better, lol.

I tried the soup at the 2006 Okinawan festival, and it was good, but to me, it seemed blander in taste by comparison to what I’ve had before.

If you want to replicate the taste of the soup you had at the festival, this is what I would do.

In a large pot saute several slices of ginger until the aroma comes out, then add one can of chicken stock and seven cups of water. Add pig’s feet and start seasoning with about 2 teaspoons of Hawaiian salt (adjust to your liking) a dash of shoyu, and several dashes of white pepper (not so you can detect or taste it, but it boosts the taste of the pork flavor in the dashi.

Ladle some of the dashi into a smaller pot and simmer the konbu and shiitake separately, so it won’t affect the pork flavor, like you said it did. Do cook the mustard cabbage and togan with the pig’s feet. When finished, strain the konbu and shiitake, and add to the pig’s feet.

Good Luck!