Cod Roe Ice Cream! It’s surprisingly refreshing and yummy. It also comes with a savory cod roe cracker on top.

Kanefuku Mentaiko (Japanese for “cod roe”) Factory in Tokoname, Aichi Prefecture has a little museum in their factory that explains the kinds of cod that are used to extract the roe which is a popular ingredient for Japanese cuisine and food products.

The processing plant has a see-through window so we can see the process:

One question I have yet to find out is where do all the fish without cod roe go? If you know the answer, please share, thank you!!! 🙂

There are free samples of cod roe or food products with cod roe.

My Chinese guide, Fan (in beige, below left) is talking to her (male) Japanese colleague at the H.I.S. Tour Company main office through videophone because Thukakoshi (in red, below right) who is the Japanese Kanefuku Factory guide will talk about the museum in Japanese and the male colleague will translate the narration to me in English.  It worked for a while until the phone line got cut off several times so we just used my free phone app translator called “Smart Translate” which was more efficient between me and Thukakoshi 🙂

Fan, my guide.

Thukakoshi, Kanefuku Factory’s Japanese guide talking to Fan’s colleague at H.I.S. Tour Company Main Office

There were many ideas of how to use cod roe in appetizing recipes:

There were many nice souvenirs to purchase except the Cod Roe salad dressing that I wanted needed to be constantly refrigerated which was a challenge for the remainder of my trip.

The factory opening up the museum and store on premises was a nice way of increasing appreciation for its products and it increased the sales from just selling to wholesale clients to selling to retail. The kids who get to come here will also have a better brand recall specially with the looping jingle for the Mentaiko (at the end of this video below)

It was an educational trip not just learning about how cod roe is processed but also gave more ideas on product use, and expanded my taste horizons learning how a very savory food ingredient like cod roe could actually be yummy as a dessert (such as in ice cream)! So we don’t have to limit dessert ideas to purely traditionally used dessert ingredients but we can think unconventional when creating a recipe!