Updated November 12, 2024

Ozouni is also sometimes spelled ozoni, zouni, or zoni. 

This specialty Japanese soup, served exclusively on the Japanese New Year, is thought to bring success and a promising future to those who drink it.

Ozouni is a part of Osechi Ryouri, which is the Japanese way of saying foods that are eaten during New Year’s. The Osechi Ryori are usually served in lacquered boxes.

Ozouni is the honorific way to say zouni – the actual name of the soup. Zouni is made up of two Japanese kanji characters that combine to mean “mixed boil”. Thus the soup is necessarily  made of mixed ingredients that are boiled!

Historically, ozouni is a samurai cuisine. The dish was cooked during battles and was very important for restoring a samurai’s strength between fights.

The tradition of eating ozouni on New Year’s Day began during the mid 1440s. The Japanese offered mochi to the gods and Buddha on Omisoka, or New Year’s Eve. This allowed there to be a fully prepared and ready ingredient to eat on New Year’s Day. To rest up and have an easily preparable meal, the Japanese would then consume this mochi the next morning in a soup!

The main idea of ozouni is that it is easy to prepare, and will allow the main chef of the house to rest on New Year’s Day. Instead of cooking rice, which is the traditional morning Japanese food, ozouni is made with dried mochi cakes. To make things even easier, the additional ingredients such as vegetables or chicken are often prepared in advance and stored in the fridge.

Mochi are Japanese rice cakes made of short-grained glutinous rice. The mochi are made by being pounded into the desired shape. The resulting product can then be eaten immediately, formed into a shape, or dried and preserved. Mochi can be used for many things, and can be flavored to be savory or sweet. They are also often colored to suit the occasion for which they are used!

For the most part, the mochi are served in a rectangular shape, grilled, and boiled with a leafy vegetable, chicken, kamaboko (fish cake), and a soy sauce and salt broth. The reason that leafy vegetables and chicken are used is because when the words are combined in Japanese characters, they read na-o-toru. This can be translated to “to advance in life”. Often, the kamaboko used is red and white in color; these are colors that are associated with prosperity and health, and thus contribute to the festive mood!

Interestingly, ozouni is known to have many variations across all of Japan, traditionally, each household within a region will make ozouni the same way, but some households invent their own unique recipes for the dish. The requirement is that it is fairly easy to make, uses ingredients with high nutritional content that are easily digestible, and uses mochi cake.

In Western Japan, the mochi are served in many small round pieces in a bowl with soup poured lightly over top. Often the regions in Western Japan such as Kyoto or Osaka use a white miso soup base instead of a clear soup base. In addition, these areas like to include a large peeled taro root plant in their ozouni!

Other variations include using fish instead of chicken, using mochi filled with sweet red bean paste, and using different seasonings. Many regions choose ingredients that relate to what resources are available around them! For example, regions closer to the sea will use fish and seafood ingredients, while mountainous regions will use more vegetables, roots, and mushrooms. A fun way to find out where someone is from in Japan is to find out what kind of ozouni they eat on New Years!  

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