A freshwater turtle native to Asia, suppon (Pelodiscus japonicus) occupies a unique place in Japanese cuisine. With recordings showing its consumption back to the 8th century, it sits at the cross roads of traditional medicine and delicacy. Compared to other turtles, it is unique as the surface of its shell is not keratinized but instead soft due to a high gelatine content, allowing it to be made into one of the most luscious and rich soups and stocks in existence.
In traditional Chinese medicine, the resulting soup and meat is said to replenish the yin, hydrating the body and eliminating hot flashes and fever, and is also expected to improve liver function and purify the blood. By the Edo period, it had become closely associated with yojoshoku (養生食), foods eaten for health maintenance rather than indulgence, eaten as a strengthening food for warriors, aristocrats, and monks.
While most suppon consumed in Japan is now farmed, the most sought after is still that of wild suppon, and is said to be at its peak flavour just before it enters hibernation for the winter. Once caught, the suppon is easily butchered due to its soft body but will try to defend itself by extending its neck and biting with its strong jaws before retracting.
When working at a sushi restaurant, I remember cycling to the fish market one morning and the fishmonger asking me if I’d like to try preparing suppon, presenting me with a live turtle in a net semi-submerged in water with a bubbler. Being relatively new at that time, I politely declined stating my discomfort, which was of course greeting with a round of laughter from staff and some mentions of how I was missing out. Now, many years later when we first starting testing with suppon, we were blown away by the resulting stock not only due to its intense clear flavour that easily outstripped that of stock made from Poulet de Bresse, but of the lip-coating, rich, silken mouthfeel that was we had not experienced before.
Whilst the idea of consuming turtle might seem exotic to many and not to the preference of the majority, we still felt the need to document the information presented in this series for the sake of completeness, just as many of the other articles on this website. Here, we wish to thank the kind lady at Yamasada Shoten at the Adachi Fish Market (足立市場 株式会社山定商店) for helping us source not only farmed suppon for our testing, but also convince a hunter to go out and find us a wild female soft-shell turtle with eggs at the very last minute at a time when it believed that most turtles would have already started hibernating.
