I bet you are right – but I think it’s a regional thing, plus I’m sure the recipe changes from family to family.

This is just the kind of dish no two moms make the same way. And, to tell you the truth, I’ve never had Kenchin-jiru outside my house!

As I think about it, though, my mom’s version was not really standard. Here’s a dish called “kanchin-JIRU” – Jiru means a soup in Japanese – and my (mom’s) recipe isn’t even a soup.

This is why I say my blog is about “home cooking”: all I can really teach is what I learned from home and not “international Japanese cooking” – Japanese restaurant abroad cooking – which doesn’t quite exist in Japan.

You made me wonder if adding pork to kenchin-jiru is maybe my mom’s own “innovation”, so I did a bit of research online in Japanese. Turns out that a lot of people add pork to kenchinjiru in Japan, even if it was originally a staple for Zen Buddhists.

But I’ve had several of these kinds of misunderstandings with readers already. I think a lot of it is regional. My family is from Kyushu and I grew up in Kansai, near Kyoto. So all the recipes and taste will be more South Western Japanese. And, personally, I don’t like at all the “Tokyo taste” – too much Soy Sauce!

But I think we have very different ideas about “Ton-Jiru”. That dish (also known as “Buta-jiru”) is different (even if it seems so similar) – it refers to miso soup with pork and vegetables. I even put up a recipe for it: http://kanakoskitchen.com/2009/11/08/butajiru-hearty-miso-soup-flavored-with-pork/. Again, I guess some families in some parts of Japan also put miso in Kenchinjiru (see, it’s confusing!) but my mom’s version was definitely without miso.