Nittou Relay Plum Kombu Soup/Tea with Red Pepper

Sorry for the big label residue. There was an English label that was stubborn about being torn off.

There's an old SNL commercial spoof in which a couple argue over whether or not a product, Shimmer, is a floor wax or a dessert topping. Someone appears to be similarly confused about this packet of powdered foodstuff. It's referred to both as a soup and as a tea. The manufacturer's press information says that it has ume (plum) tea to refresh, but the package calls it "soup".

This actually raises a question that I've had come up recently in another context. It's the sort of question that only someone who reviews food for fun (not really "for a living", as the only living I could make would be sleeping over sewer grates and begging for pennies in front of Peet's Coffee based on my blogging income). That question is, "what makes "tea" tea?" This comes up because I have been sampling Numi's savory tea for review and those flavors include tomato mint, carrot curry, and broccoli cilantro. The Numi includes actual tea leaves as well as dehydrated vegetables, and, it's frankly, dreadful, but clearly there is no doubt that it can call itself a "tea". It may be horrible to drink, but there's no identity crisis to complicate the discussion.

This product is different because it includes no actual tea leaves. It has powdered kelp, red pepper, salt, sugar, plum, labiate leaf, MSG, citric acid, and labiate flavor. Techically, I guess this is a tisane, but it's not like we call anything which does not include tea leaves a tisane. Much herbal tea does not contain tea leaves, but nobody will call it anything but "tea".

So, semantics aside, let's get to this product. And, incidentally, it's actually soup, not tea of any sort. It looks like a soup, tastes like a soup, and has the savory properties of soup (Numi savory tea be damned!). What is more, it's a very tasty, low calorie soup which I wish I could pick up regularly at any old American market. 

The preparation method is to take 1/2 cup of hot water and then stir the powder into it. This produces something like looks like water from your fish tank that has not been cleaned for far too long. After stirring, the cloudy bits of kombu (kelp) move around the glass like a murky lava lamp. Mind you, I generally don't make my soup in a clear drinking glass, but did so to get a picture for my readers. I wouldn't recommend doing this in anything which doesn't have a handle unless you want to burn your fingers.

The soup mainly smells like the plum. When I say "plum", don't think of American sweet plums, but Japanese umeboshi (pickled plum). It lends a piquant acidic flavor that is the first thing that hits your tongue when you taste the soup. This is quickly followed up by the red pepper, which is just hot enough to add spice and heat the back of your throat, but not burn a hole through your tongue. The balance of these two major elements is perfect. I couldn't taste the kelp at all. I'm sure it was there adding flavor depth to a limited extent, but it was pretty overwhelmed by the plum, pepper, and salt. In fact, salt is the first ingredient.

For the serving size, this is pretty salty, unsurprisingly. A 2-gram packet provides 360 mg. of sodium. Even though sugar is an ingredient (the second one), this is listed as having zero calories. I'm guessing it's one of those deals where there are few enough calories per serving that they don't have to measure them. If you're on a diet which allows lots of salt, this makes for a pretty handy option when you're craving salty food or, as the package suggests, might want to spice up your pasta or rice. You can stir a packet into pasta or dump the soup over rice for a tasty variation.

I bought this at Daiso Japan for $1.50. There are 7 packets so that's a pretty reasonable price per serving. I would warn anyone who decides to try this not only that it is salty, but also spicy in a way which may not suit just everyone. If you're a fan of umeboshi and don't mind a little heat though, I think this is absolutely worth a try.

Kitami City White Curry Soup

Sorry that I don't have a picture of the soup dissolved in a cup. It's just a white, semi-translucent fluid. It doesn't resemble any disgusting bodily fluids or anything. Nope.

Kitami City is in Hokkaido and this is a souvenir package of instant consomme soup. You might ask yourself if I have been to Hokkaido lately. The answer would be "no". You might ask yourself if one of my students has gone there and kindly given me this soup. The answer would be "no". You might ask yourself if I pawed through the trash of someone who recently went to Hokkaido and discovered a discarded bit of food. The answer would be "no" as I'm not quite that far gone yet.

Like many special regional souvenirs, this is sold in Tokyo. I was taking a break-time walk at work and walked around the Shinjuku Southern Terrace area (famous for its Christmas lights and Krispy Kreme). It seems that it's a mini-Mecca of places that stock regional souvenirs. One was for Miyazaki prefecture and another for Hokkaido. I went into the latter and perused their stock. I was familiar with a lot of things already from a bit over a decade of office work and being the recipient of obligatory souvenir treats from traveling salesmen. The "corn choco" was always a crowd pleaser. I wasn't going to buy anything because it's all pretty expensive and sold in portions meant to allow your whole office to partake. However, the soup looked like it'd make a good companion to the sandwich I'd brought for lunch and I debated buying the instant gobo (burdock) soup or this white curry. The choice I made is obvious. I do wonder why white curry is in any way representative of Kitami City. It may have something to do with their winter festival because, you know, snow... white...white... curry. Yeah, it's a pretty tenuous link.

The company that makes this, "Greens Kitami", makes several different packets of dehydrated consomme soup. Their own web site link was dead or redirected, but they appeared on an aggregate site and it appears their specialty is onions. Since most soup has onions, this makes sense, though you don't really see any in this powdered mix.

This was an expensive  bit of soup at 315 yen ($4.07) for 10 packets of consomme powder. Each sleeve makes 150 ml. or three-quarters of a cup of soup. That's not much for your money, but at least each serving is only 15 calories. I had to guess how much water to use the first time since I was at work and there were no measuring cups. I believe I made it too strong, but that was still good.

The smell is very good. It is not exactly the same as conventional curry. In fact, it lacks that telltale scent of cumin or generic curry powder. The first ingredient is pork extract followed by a lot of other extracts, which is to be expected from consomme. The flavor is definitely that of curry, but it is less "heavy" and overbearing. It's not very hot, but has enough of a kick to make it interesting. In fact, this has a deep savory edge and is quite delicious. It's definitely a cut above your usual powdered soup mix.

I liked this soup very, very much. In fact, it's safe to say that I'd consume it regularly if it weren't so expensive and available in a rather limited fashion. The bottom line, however, is that this would have to be the food equivalent of cocaine for me to buy such small portions for 32 yen each on a regular basis. However, I would buy it again as a special treat, and can definitely recommend trying it if you come across it in your travels.

Nichirei Cantonese Shark Fin Soup

Sometimes I wonder how it comes to pass that people decide that a particular part of an animal is a good thing to eat. Back when the recipes were originally created, I guess they were just trying to scavenge anything edible from whatever carcass was at hand. If they caught a shark, they probably ate every scrap of it and convinced themselves that it was good and good for them ("shark scrotum tastes like a monkey's behind smells, but it enhances virility!").

Now that we have the luxury of leaving behind the less juicy and delicious parts of animals, it would seem that inertia drives the valuation of the less savory parts. I realize that it is also possible that people feel that it is conservation, but I've seen too many people turn up their noses at the idea of leftovers the third day after a meal (the Japanese are generally not big on leftovers) to think they want to use every scrap of the animal. Shark fin soup is supposed to increase sexual potency, but actually causes sterility if consumed in large quantities. It also is supposed to be pretty healthy, but isn't as good for you as vegetable soup.

This package of prepared shark fin soup comes to me not of my own volition, but through my New Year's fukubukuro (lucky bag). It's going to take me about half a year to get through reviewing all of the items in those bags. It means I should seriously reconsider whether I should keep buying them, especially from supermarkets which give you a lot of items. On the one hand, I like the surprise. On the other hand, It's late April and I'm far from finished with the products I got!

I prepared this soup exactly as instructed, adding in 2 cups (500 ml.) of water, squeezing in the unappetizing-looking brown goo in the foil packet, simmering it for about 7 minutes and then sending in a stream of egg and allowing it to cook. It smelled very familiar, like mixes of Chinese-style food that I've had in Japan in the distant past. My main concerns with this was that it would be too salty and too thin on flavor, especially at only 44 calories per serving (not including the egg, which one must provide for oneself).

It turned out that the soup has a deep savory flavor which includes a heavy chicken component. This isn't surprising since there is chicken bouillon and extract listed twice in the ingredients list. There are also little slices of mushroom, but they mainly lend texture rather than flavor. Soy sauce and Chinese spices round out the flavor profile. This doesn't taste overly salty, in fact, it's close to being just about right, but it has 3.2 grams of salt per serving (1/4 of the package). Considering that the average adult is recommended to consume about 6 grams total, that's a lot for a small bowl of soup.

This is one of the tastiest types of packaged soup I've had. I make my own soup several times a week, so gaining my approval isn't all that easy. Even my husband, who is a fussy eater, liked it enough to say he'd have it again if the price isn't ridiculously out of line with the volume (something we can't know since I didn't buy it as an individual item). The company that makes this, Nichirei, has now hit its second home run with me with its packaged food. The first thing I sampled from them was its imagawayaki offering, and I loved it. If you're looking for a quick and tasty soup to augment your meal, I'd definitely recommend trying this out if you have no or few concerns about salt consumption.

Pokka Iroiro Soup

I pay a lot more attention to new products now than I have ever done since coming to Japan. In fact, it is interesting how doing this blog has altered my focus on a daily basis. It used to be that every time I went to a store, I was drawn to the imports to see if any old favorites had somehow made their way to these shores. Now, I'm drawn to the domestic new products for review fodder. This is one of the many ways in which this blog has helped me develop a renewed appreciation for living here. 

I noticed recently as the rainy season and summer heat has poured on that instant soup designed to be prepared and consumed cold is on many shelves. I chose this Pokka Iroiro (various) soup because the three flavors were all appealing to me - potato, corn, and pea. A lot of the other cold soups were in one flavor only, or contained mushroom or other flavors that were less appealing. I found this particular variety pack at Peacock supermarket for 298 yen ($3.37).

Pokka, incidentally, is a very well-known manufacturer of prepared foods and canned beverages in Japan.  They have their own drink vending machines and sell "Black" and "Demitasse" brand coffee among other drinks. They also sell lemon juice, several types of instant soup, and are the only domestic maker of croutons that I ever see on the market shelves. As someone who can't abide a salad without croutons, this is something that I notice. The company was established in 1957 and started their business selling artificial lemon products.

From left: potato, pea, corn.

One thing I didn't notice, though it says so right on the box, was that there are 8 packets, but 4 of them are potato and there are only 2 each of corn and pea. I never understand why they feel it necessary to be as disproportionate as possible and to always offer fewer of the more appealing flavors. I like potato just fine, but it's a relatively bland offering. I'd prefer more corn (of course, who wouldn't!).

To prepare this soup, you measure 130 ml. (about 2/3 of a cup) of milk into a cup and add in the powder. Wait 2 minutes then stir it up. I was very careful to add in the exact amount of milk because I didn't want to risk messing up the concentration of the flavor. Note that I used low-fat (.5%) milk.

Potato (42 calories for the powder):

This smelled and looked a lot like usual instant potato potage soup. Potage, incidentally, is a thick, creamy soup usually made with onion, garlic, butter, and potatoes. The texture was a bit funky though. It was rather lumpy, like soft bits of instant mashed potato flakes suspended in milk. In fact, the milk flavor really showed through this and Japanese milk is not one of my favorite things. On the plus side, I could taste some of the savory elements toward the end of a taste of the soup. The flavor hit me in three waves pretty much - potato, milk, chives and onion-garlic seasoning. This was decidedly so-so. I think it would have been better with tastier milk, but the texture was still pretty sub-par regardless of the dairy flavor.

Corn (39 calories for the powder):

The corn dissolved more smoothly than the potato, though I did have to smash some globby bits up with my spoon. It was also dominated by the milk's flavor, but did carry some of the classic flavor of sweet corn as you experience it in Japanese instant corn soup. My main problem with it was that it tasted quite sweet, almost to the level of feeling like a dessert. There's a smooth, rich sense to the hot version of this soup which was completely absent from this cold version. It tasted more like corn-flavored milk than actual corn soup. It wasn't bad at all, but definitely not worth the expense or even the handful of calories.

Pea (28 calories for the powder):

This one smelled the strongest, and was the least dominated by the milk flavor. Mostly, I could taste a bit of the pea flavor at the end of a sip. This is rather on the sweet side, and the most palatable of the flavors, but still not incredibly impressive. Like the corn soup, there is a rich sense of savoriness that is usually present in pea soup which was missing from this. Like the potato soup, the texture was rather lumpy as if the powder couldn't fully dissolve in the cold liquid.

The question about this soup for me initially wasn't really going to be mainly about the flavor, though obviously that is a part of it and this failed every time because the milk flavor dominated. I know what powdered instant soups tend to taste like and I actually like a lot of the hot ones in Japan (though, frankly, they are expensive for the amount you get, so I rarely have them). The question was more about the texture and whether or not potage-style soups were going to be appealing when cold. The answer for me was a big fat "meh". Given the choice, even in summer, I'd take a hot version of instant soup over one of these cold ones for the texture and a flavor profile undiluted by Japanese milk's weirdnesses.

As an experiment, I decided to alter this a bit to see if it could be better. For one thing, I made the potato version hot with 50% milk and 50% water. I wanted to see if the flavor of the soup asserted itself more prominently if there was less milk to dominate. The result was strange. It still didn't have much flavor, but at least the Japanese milk wasn't overbearing when I made the soup. The result of the heat was the most interesting thing. The potato soup got super, duper thick. I didn't want to water it down though because it was so weak anyway. I think the formulation must be different than usual instant soup to make it dissolve in cold liquids and putting it in hot liquid causing it to go a bit nuts. I also tried the pea flavor cold with 50% milk and 50% water. That was actually a better, but not exactly impressive result. I could taste the pea flavor better, and the weird milk flavor wasn't as strong, but it still wasn't great soup.

The bottom line is that these really aren't soups so much as milk flavoring powders. The overall taste experience is akin to making cold chocolate using Nestlé's Quik (Nesquik) or malted cold milk beverages using Milo. If you ever thought you'd enjoy a glass of milk more if it was corn, pea, or potato flavored, these are for you. Otherwise, I'd give them a miss.