Shiroishi City is a city of Miyagi Prefecture, which is located at the foot of Mt. Zao. That mountain is very popular among tourists especially those who love skiing with the fine powder snow, beautiful scenery, and hot spring. In addition to those, there is a unique noodle dish. That is “Shiroisi ūmen”.
What is Shiroishi ūmen?
Shiroishi ūmen is a traditional noodle dish eaten in Shiroishi City. The biggest feature of ūmen is its 9cm of shortness. It is normally boiled and eaten with dashi soup, but also enjoyed in various ways, for example, deep frying into a crisp texture with vegetables or stewing with miso flavoured soup.
By the way, ūmen is written as “温麺” in Japanese letters, which means “warm noodles”, but you can also find cold ones as well.
Difference between ūmen and sōmen
Sōmen and ūmen
Ūmen is similar to other noodles called sōmen, which is one of the most popular flour-based noodles that are generally served cold and eaten in the summer season.
One of the biggest differences between those is the length. As it is mentioned before, the noodle of ūmen is about 9cm in length. It is about half the length of sōmen.
Secondly, ūmen is made only of flour, salt and water whereas sōmen is added with vegetable oil. This is another big uniqueness of ūmen. Usually, noodles contain oil as their ingredient, the one without oil is a rare find as ūmen is.
Family-minded invention
There is a legend that how those unique noodles were invented.
A long time ago, there was one guy named Asaemon who lived with his father. One day, his father got sick on his stomach and was told to go on a diet for a while by his doctor. Asaemon was sorry for that and tried to find something healthy for his father and then found a monk who told him how to make noodles without any oil. His father could eat those non-oil noodles because it was very fair to his stomach, and he got well soon thanks to that. The lord of that area heard about the story and named the noodles as ūmen because of Asaemon’s heartwarming act. That is why ūmen is written as “温麺”, which means “warm noodles” in Japanese.
Anyone can enjoy
Zaimokuiwa Park
The charm of Shiroishi ūmen is that it is something for everybody. Now Shiroishi ūmen is popular in the Shiroishi area and loved by many people. It is because it is made without oil and good for sensitive stomach from kids to the elderly, and the shortness of the noodles enables them to easily eat.
Finally, there seem to be quite a few people who hesitate to slurp noodles by making a noise, but you can probably enjoy this noodle dish without slurping strongly.
