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ABC Cooking Studio partners with Japan Niigata prefecture for an educational green tour in October 2016. The tour is designated to visit the famous natural spots and taste the traditional menu in Niigata. Ten of ABC Cooking Studio tutors are invited to this trip and shared their professional cooking skills with local farmers and restaurant. 

Niigata is a humid subtropical city receiving high yearly snowfall. This snow is saved, and used to preserve food and other things as a natural snow fridge called yukimuro (lit. “snow rooms”). Inside of yukimuro, the atmosphere is kept cool and moist, which is optimum for food storage! Local people use yukimuro to keep vegetable and alcohol in a zero pressure condition that makes food sweetie and delicious.  Yukimuro is gaining attention as a green energy source that doesn’t emit any carbon dioxide.

Niigata prefecture is one of Japan’s several major rice production areas. In the center of the prefecture, the Uonuma region is nationally famous for its crop of delicious koshihikari rice. The secret of this area’s rice is the pure water from melted snow in the Echigo Mountains caused by the region’s severe climate due to large changes in temperature.

With about 90 sake breweries, Niigata is one of Japan’s leading sake producing areas. It is said that water is the key ingredient in making sake. The snow and rain that falls on the tall mountains of Niigata soaks into the earth, forming springs and streams and eventually flowing into the rice fields. This water not only makes the sake delicious, but also enhances the flavor of the rice, the other main ingredient in sake making.