Iwatsuka Inaka no Okaki Rice Cracker Soy Sauce

This is the original — the plain soy version of Inaka no Okaki, and the truest expression of what the product is about.

Where the zarame edition adds a sweet sugar coat, this one strips the idea back to its essentials: mochi rice, soy sauce, and the frying craft that ties them together.

Okaki, worth restating, is the richer branch of the rice-cracker family.

It is made not from ordinary rice but from mochi — the sticky glutinous rice pounded for New Year’s — which fries into something denser and more deeply flavored than a standard senbei.

Iwatsuka, the Niigata maker famous among Japanese confectioners for building its whole reputation on domestic rice, uses 100% Japanese mochi rice here, and with nothing but soy to hide behind, the quality of the grain is the entire show.

The signature is a two-part texture the package makes its central promise: crisp and hard on the outside — kari’ — giving way to a soft, crumbling interior — horohoro.

Over it goes a mellow, well-rounded soy glaze, savory and fragrant with the toasty aroma of shoyu meeting hot rice, kept gentle rather than sharp.

It is the plainest thing Iwatsuka makes in this line and, for many Japanese eaters, the most re-buyable: the honest, everyday okaki you keep in the cupboard and finish without noticing.

Each stick is individually wrapped and keeps for months.

Alongside its rock-sugar sibling — sweet-glazed and dressed up — this soy original is the bare, savory foundation the whole idea is built on.

About this item
Item Name : Inaka No Okaki Soy Sauce
Brand : Iwatsuka Seika
Item Form : Rice Cracker
Number of Items : 8 Counts (Pack of 1)