Tsuke Kenchin (Dipping Soba with Kenchin-jiru)

Tsuke Kenchin is a local dish from Ibaraki Prefecture in which thick soba noodles are served separately from a warm bowl of kenchin-jiru (vegetable soup) — a hearty broth loaded with root vegetables such as taro, daikon, burdock, and carrot, along with konnyaku, and seasoned with miso, soy sauce, and mirin — so the noodles can be dipped into the soup much like tsukemen. The dish is said to date back to the late Edo period, and the custom of eating soba at the old-calendar New Year (around the time of today's Setsubun) is believed to have spread from Mito Domain throughout Ibaraki Prefecture. It has long been prepared as a festive dish in mid-November, once the harvest is largely finished, and unlike the 'kenchin soba' found in other prefectures — where the noodles are served directly in the soup — Ibaraki's distinctive style is to keep the soba and kenchin-jiru separate, dipping the noodles as one would with tsukemen. It remains especially popular from autumn through winter, when freshly harvested soba comes into season, and is deeply rooted in eateries and households throughout the prefecture, particularly in the northern Kenhoku region.