Lucky Japanese new year ice cream! Baskin-Robbins’ flavor inspired by traditional osechi cuisine

Two of the few osechi dishes almost everyone likes team up for a very special, very Japanese flavor that promises good luck in the new year.

In Japan, the tradition is to celebrate the start of the new year by eating osechi. Pictured above, osechi is a lavish spread of painstakingly prepared delicacies with luxurious ingredients. What’s more, pretty much every dish has some sort of auspicious significance in either its name or its appearance.

Well, that’s the tradition, anyway. In practice, though, a lot of Japanese people, particularly in younger age groups, feel no regret about skipping osechi. It’s difficult and time-consuming to make, extremely pricey to buy pre-made, and to most modern palates, the flavors simply aren’t appealing enough to warrant all the effort and expense.

But again, osechi is a multi-dish meal, and certain types are consistent crowd pleasers, and so Baskin-Robbins Japan has taken two of the most popular types of osechi as the inspiration for a brand-new osechi ice cream.

The Kuromame Kinton Vanilla is a frozen dessert reimaging of kuromame and kurikinton. Kuromame (literally “black beans”) is sweet dish of simmered beans, while kurikinton is a dish of candied chestnuts and sweet potato.

▼ Kurikinton (red arrow) and kuromame (blue arrow), made extra-special with flecks of gold

Baskin-Robbins’ carries that over with a mixed chestnut, sweet potato, and vanilla ice cream base enhanced with sweet black beans from Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture. In terms of granting luck and good fortune, the ice cream checks the same boxes as kuromame and kurikinton too. The mame in kuromame means “bean,” which the ice cream accounts for, but is also the pronunciation of the Japanese word for “perseverance.” Meanwhile, kurikinton’s kuri is chestnut, also part of the new ice cream flavor, and kin means both “yellow” (which is the ice cream’s color) and “wealth,” symbolizing prosperity in the new year.

Kuromame Kinton Vanilla goes on sale December 26 and should be sticking around for at least the early part of January. Oh, and if you really want to adhere to tradition, remember that you’re supposed to eat osechi for your meals from January 1 to 3, so you now have a genuine cultural excuse start off 2021 by eating ice cream three days in a row.

Source: PR Times via Entabe
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: PR Times, Pakutaso (edited by SoraNews24)
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