Kasu-jiru
粕汁
Kansai's sake-lees soup — kasu from the Nada and Fushimi breweries melted into awase dashi with salmon and root vegetables. Winter insulation in a bowl.
By Japanese Cookbook Kitchen · June 8, 2026
鍋- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Beginner
Kasu-jiru is what a brewing region does with its byproducts, and Kansai was the brewing region. Through the Edo period the breweries of Nada — the coastal strip between Osaka and Kobe — and Fushimi, south of Kyoto, made much of the sake drunk in the shogun's capital, shipping it east in dedicated taru-kaisen barrel boats. Pressing all that sake left mountains of kasu, the dense, aromatic lees — and the surrounding towns bought it by the sheet for pickling beds, amazake, and above all this soup. It was thrift that tasted like luxury: the kasu came cheap and carried the whole perfume of the brewery into a workaday pot of dashi and vegetables.
The soup itself is winter engineering. Sake kasu is mildly alcoholic and famously warming — the lore says a bowl of kasu-jiru keeps you warm the whole walk home, and the lore is not wrong. Salted salmon or pork belly gives it backbone, daikon and carrot give it sweetness, and the melted kasu turns the broth ivory and faintly bready, like miso soup's rich cousin who works at a sake brewery. Find kasu at any Japanese grocery in the cold months, often stamped with the name of the brewery it came from — a small piece of provenance floating in your soup.
Soak the kasu in warm dashi and mash it to a paste before it goes anywhere near the pot — dropped in whole, it bobs around as stubborn dumplings that never quite dissolve and never quite forgive you.
板前の一言 · A word from the kitchen
Ingredients材料
Serves 4
The soup
- 150 gsake kasu (sake lees) — sold in sheets or paste at Japanese groceries, often near the miso; it keeps for months refrigerated and freezes indefinitely
- 1 Lawase dashi
- 2 tbspwhite miso
- 1 tbspusukuchi (light) soy sauce
The solids
- 200 gsalted salmon fillet, in bite-size pieces — pork belly is the equally traditional alternative; use one, not both
- 150 gdaikon, in thin quarter-rounds
- 1carrot, in thin half-moons
- 100 gkonnyaku, torn in small pieces
- 1 sheetaburaage, in strips
- 2scallions, sliced, to finish
Method作り方
Step 1: Wake up the kasu
Tear the sake kasu into a bowl, cover with a ladleful of warm dashi, and leave it to soften for 10 minutes while you cut vegetables. Then mash it into a smooth paste. Aged, firmer kasu needs the full soak; fresh soft paste barely needs any.
Step 2: Simmer the roots first
Bring the dashi to a gentle simmer with the daikon, carrot, and konnyaku and cook until the daikon turns translucent, about 10 minutes. Roots want a head start; everything else in the pot is quick.
Step 3: Add salmon and aburaage
Slip in the salmon pieces and aburaage and simmer 5 minutes more, skimming once. Salted salmon seasons the broth as it cooks — taste before you add all the soy later, and hold some back if the fish was aggressive.
Step 4: Melt in the kasu and miso
Loosen the kasu paste with hot broth, then stir it into the pot with the white miso and soy. Let it return to the barest simmer — do not boil it hard, which coarsens the aroma — and cook 3 minutes until the soup is ivory, faintly sweet, and smells unmistakably of the brewery.
Step 5: Serve steaming
Ladle into deep bowls and top with scallion. A pinch of shichimi is welcome. This is a soup that functions as central heating; serve it with rice and nothing else needs to happen at dinner.
道具 · The tools
Equipment
Donabe
土鍋The clay hot-pot that makes nabemono taste like nabemono — a gentle, even simmer that carries straight to the table.
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Questions from the kitchen
What exactly is sake kasu?
The lees left when fermented sake mash is pressed — the solids of rice and yeast that don't make it into the bottle. It is packed with umami and aroma, mildly alcoholic, and historically dirt cheap, which is why brewery towns built a whole home cuisine around it: kasu-jiru, kasu-zuke pickles, amazake.
Is kasu-jiru alcoholic?
Slightly. Sake kasu carries around 8 percent alcohol, and a gentle simmer drives off much but not all of it. A bowl made to this recipe is comparable to a splash of cooking wine in a stew — but simmer it a few extra minutes uncovered for children or anyone avoiding alcohol entirely, or reduce the kasu by half.
Miso soup with kasu, or its own thing?
Its own thing that borrows miso's manners. The kasu carries the body and the perfume; the white miso is there to round its edges and add salt-sweetness. Some Kansai households skip miso entirely and season with soy alone — pleasantly austere, and worth trying once you know the base version.
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