Rice is cooked slightly firm, then worked in a mortar with a pestle until about half of the grains have broken down and the whole mass turns sticky. Rolled between the palms, it becomes a damako.

The name has two competing accounts behind it. In Akita, damako is what children's toys are called, and the little rice balls apparently look like them. The other version says the things were so good that children ate them in silent concentration, and damatte taberu ko, the child who eats without speaking, got shortened.

The pot is built on stock drawn from hinai jidori chicken, and both the broth and the other ingredients in it are essentially the same as those of kiritanpo from Odate, further inland. The differences between them come down to two things: no skewer is needed here, and the rice is not normally grilled at all.

The area around Hachirogata lagoon, in the Minamiaki district, is given as the place of origin. New rice is cooked, crushed, rolled between the hands, and eaten. Kiritanpo has become the famous one, but this is the older shape of the same idea: a harvest turned directly into something you can put in a pot, without a stick.