Hoshiimo

Dou you know “Hoshiimo”? Hoshiimo is dried sweet potato. It is called Kansouimo in other word. I love Hoshiimo, so I wrote about this.

 You can find Hoshiimo in Sapporo. Many supermarkets sell them. For my surprise, many convenience stores sell them, too. When I find them in the shops, I become glad.

 Hoshiimo is a special product of my home town, Ibaraki. Many people may think that the most special product in Ibaraki is fermented soybeans (nattou). But, I want you to not forget Hoshiimo is also speciallity. Ibaraki produces Hoshiimo the best in Japan. In winter, there are many sweet potatoes which are dried. You can see them in my home town.

  Hoshiimo is made of only sweet potato. Sweet potato which becomes Hoshiimo is not the sweet potato which you usually eat. We use special sweet potato to make Hoshiimo. Its peel is not red. Its peel is white. This sweet potato is suitable for making Hoshiimo. It has more water in it, so if you dry usual sweet potato, it will become tough.

 Let’s see about how to make Hoshiimo. At first, we grow sweet potato. After we harvest them, we store the sweet potatoes in dark storage. During the potatoes are stored, the sweet potatoes become sweeter. Because it becomes sweeter with the time, Hoshiimo which made in February is sweeter than one which made December.

 After the potatoes become sweet, we process it. Sweet potato is steamed and become soft. Then we peal them by work using the hands. Steamed potatoes are very hot but the pealing is easy. The hot sweet potato is yellow and looks so good. After it become not hot, we slice them by exclusive slicer. We place the sliced potato side by side. Potatoes are on nets. This net is suitable to dry potatoes. Finally, we put the nets under winds and the sun. Winds are cold and dry, so they can dry sliced sweet potatoes in a week. The winds are sea breeze. My home town is near the sea and it suitable to making Hoshiimo. My home town had fishing village. There are many people making dried fish, so there are nets to dry fish. At the first, dried sweet potato got an idea from those nets.

Hoshiimo is made by hands, so it can not be made by machine. In addition, we can not control weather. It is difficult to make same taste Hoshiimo. I love the simplicity taste of Hoshiimo.

 There is many kind of Hoshiimo now. The most popular one is simple sliced Hoshiimo. For example, Maruboshiimo is made from sweet potato whole. It uses small potato. When make Maruboshiimo, it takes a month to dry it. It is soft and very sweet. Murasakiimo is made from purple sweet potato. This Hoshiimo looks dark purple. Its taste is plain and not so sweet. I like Murasakiimo very much. Ninjinhoshiimo tastes like carrot. It is orange and contains carotene a lot. There are many other Hoshiimo. They are all delicious.