“Ozoni” New Year’s Soup お雑煮 2026

New Year has arrived and we are now in 2026! As usual, we had our regular breakfast on New Year’s day consisting of cappuccino, yogurt with fruit, and baked goods. We had the New Year’s soup or “ozoni お雑煮” and other auspicious Japanese New Year foods for lunch (picture #1). Along with the soup I served daikon-namasu 大根なますwith ikura イクラ salmon roe and sliced boiled octopus (small bowl right upper) as well as a number of additional sides of auspicious goodies (shown as a group on the left). 

Our ozoni doesn’t vary much every year. The mochi 餅 rice cake is encased in a deep fried tofu “abura-age 油揚げ” pouch as per my wife’s request. However, this year instead of pieces of chicken meat, I made small chicken dumplings from ground chicken which worked well.

The additional auspicious sides I served were a mixture of some from the Sushi-taro osechi boxすし太郎のお節 and some I made. With this combination I think we covered most of the New Year’s auspicious food items (picture #3).  

The items from the osechi box included; white and red kamaboko fish cake 紅白蒲鉾 (top left), kuro-mame black bean 黒豆, small bait fish “arima-ni” 雑魚の有馬煮 (both middle left),  Kazuniko herring roe marinated in miso 数の子の味噌漬け on the “hanawa-renkon 花輪レンコン” (middle center). 

Since I made “datemaki 伊達巻” New Year’s omelet, I served a piece of the one I made (middle center) although the osechi box also had it. This year, instead of making the omelet as I usually do on the stove in the rectangular pan I use to make dashi-maki, I baked the omelet in a small baking dish at 390F or 200C in the toaster oven on convection mode for 20 minutes. It cooked up OK but came out with uneven thickness which made it difficult to roll nicely. (This method needs a bit of more work to achieve “perfection”).  I also served salmon kelp roll 鮭の昆布巻き (middle right), Russian marinated salmon with ikura 鮭のロシア漬け (lower left) and fried salmon filet in sweet vinegar 鮭の南蛮漬け (lower right) all of which I made and which were the rest of my contribution to the occasion. 

We had our usual symbolic sake with this. We hit the osechi box more in the evening.