Hi there!

Welcome to Manga.Tokyo’s cooking feature, Anime Recipes.

Both anime and manga are full of amazing dishes. From Japanese traditional food to modern お菓子 (okashi – candy), we take the recipes we find in the series and cook them for real!

Since Amaama to Inazuma (Sweetness and Lighting) makes it a little easier for us by giving both the recipe and the instructions, we thought of making tonjiru, the Japanese soup we saw in Episode 02.

Ready for some cooking? Grab your gear and let’s begin!

How to cook Tonjiru From Sweetness and Lightning Episode 02

About 豚汁/Tonjiru

Tonjiru is a Japanese soup made with pork and vegetables. It’s flavoured with miso.

Kanji alert: 豚 (buta or ton) means pork and 汁 (jiru) means soup.

Tonjiru has a lot of ingredients in it and that’s why it’s usually eaten as a main course than served as a small side dish.

Tonjiru is very common in Japan, but the ingredients used are slightly different depending on the location.

The basic ingredients are pork, burdock root, carrot, Japanese radish and green onion. The variation shown in the anime added potato as well.

Preparing your own food resembles meditation in many ways. You create a whole out of parts, and the final product is going to nurture both your body and your soul. Just remember Tsumugi-chan’s face when she had that first bite of Tonjiru. That heart-warming feeling on her face.

Let’s try to make a heart-warming Tonjiru, shall we?

Ingredients

(For 3 – 4 people)

1. Pork: 150g

2. Japanese radish: 7cm

3. Carrot: half-cut

4. Burdock root: One-third

5. Potato: 1

6. Snow peas: 9

7. Green onion: half-cut

8. Tofu pocket: 1

9. Konjac: half-cut

10. Miso: 3 or 4 tablespoons (you can adjust it according to your taste)

11. Packet of dried bonito broth: 800ml

12. Sesame oil: spoonful

Water: 800ml

How to cook

1. Preparation

Cut the Japanese radish into four thin quarters.



Cut the carrot. If you have these dough shape cutters, you can make them into stars, just like in the anime!

Cut the green onion diagonally into 1cm thick slices.



Cut the burdock root diagonally into thin slices and and dip them into a bowl of water.

Cut the potato into bite-size chunks.

Cut the Konjac into bite-size chunks and boil them.

Remove the cores of the snow peas and boil them in water.

Blanch the tofu and cut it into thin layers like in the picture.

2. Fry

Add sesame oil in a frying pan and fry the pork on medium heat.

Add the carrot, burdock root, Japanese radish, potato, and Konjac.

Fry until the potato’s surface becomes semi-transparent and then add some water and the bonito broth.

(Although they didn’t fry them in the anime, these ingredients are certainly more tasty when fried.)

3. Boil

When the water start boiling, remove the scum that will gather on the surface and keep boiling it for 7 to 8 minutes on low heat.

Add the green onion and the tofu.

4. Flavoring

When the ingredients are soft enough, add the miso and dissolve it slowly.

After a couple of minutes, add the snow peas.

Our Tonjiru is ready!



I also made some rice! (Rice appeared in the episode 1).

いただきます!!!

(Itadakimasu – Let’s eat!)



How did it taste?

Tonjiru is definitely sweeter than a regular miso soup, since there were a lot of root vegetables. I especially liked the soft texture of the potato, and the pork really added to the taste of the dish. There are so many ingredients in there, that it’s nutritional value is very high. Tonjiru is a well-balanced meal! I could almost hear Tsumugi’s happy voice saying, おいしい!! (oishii – delicious)

Let me know how your own Tonjiru tastes and don’t forget to share your Tonjiru pictures in the comments! We have more for you to try in our Anime Recipes section.