Every time we’re at Donki, it seems like we end up buying something new. The last time it was a bag of assorted apples from Aomori, and before that was different types of fresh fish.
This time was no exception, and what caught our eye was the frozen Kibun Oden Set. It usually goes for S$5.90 but it was on offer at S$ 10.50 for two packs, or S$ 5.25 per pack, translating to an 11% discount.
The packaging is quite compact, but once you open up the box, there are 13 pieces of assorted oden plus a soup base. Directions on how to heat and serve are printed on the box itself and are quite easy to follow.
Oden is comfort food for us, and having a pack in the freezer is convenient. On cold and rainy days, just take it out and a simple one-pot dish can be prepared quickly and easily.
Add some vegetables, like daikon, Chinese cabbage and tang-o, to make it a balanced meal. Serve with karashi, or Japanese mustard, on the side as a spicy sinus-clearing condiment.
Despite the affordable price that it was selling at, each piece was quite unique and offered a good diversity of tastes and textures.
The hollow cylindrical chikuwa was immediately identifiable, and is a staple in any oden set. The smaller and slightly thicker fishcake wasn’t just a straightforward fishcake, but had tofu mixed into it for a softer bite.
Likewise for the longer fishcake sticks, which revealed surprising fillings of squid and burdock. The squid added a layer of chewiness, while the burdock imparted its typical earthiness. Both were quite nice.
We cut the square block of hanpen (半片) diagonally into two pieces, to achieve the more traditional triangle shape and stay true to its name of being “half-a-piece”.
If you’ve never tried hanpen before, its pillowy soft and spongy texture can be quite strange at first. But the more you eat, the more fun you’ll have. It’s like biting into a dashi-saturated marshmallow and having warm savoury broth oozing into your mouth.
The flat satsuma-age had carrots and other vegetables distributed throughout the insides, providing a good contrast of flavour and texture.
But the piece that we liked the best also happened to be the smallest — a tiny fishball generously studded with edamame.
Because of the high edamame-to-fishcake ratio, the beaniness was dominant and tasted more like fishcake stuffed into an edamame, instead of the other way round.
We liked it so much that on our next trip to Donki, we bought a bag of just this particular fishball and plan to add into future soup-based dishes.
There are many oden sets available for sale in Donki’s freezers, including many that come in impressively large styrofoam trays.
But if you happen to come across the petite Kibun Oden Set, you might want to give it a try. Because good things do come in small packages, and it’s especially true in this case.
