In Nayoro the mutton is steeped in a sauce and then simmered in that same sauce. It is not grilled. The ratio quoted locally is roughly six parts meat to four parts sauce, which tells you how much of it goes into the pot.

The Chiebun district here was sheep country from the Taisho years through to after the war. At the time it was the wool that had value. The meat had a strong smell to it and was, for the most part, simply thrown away.

Somebody decided that was wasteful, and did something about it. From around 1937, steeping the meat in sauce to take the smell off it spread through the district.

By the 1950s it was established as something families cooked at home, and that is precisely why nobody outside the district ever heard of it. Almost no restaurant served it, so it had no way of traveling anywhere. The name nikomi jingisukan, simmered jingisukan, was only coined in July 2012, when the city set up a promotional group for it. Vegetables go in with it, and udon, fried tofu, and rice cake as well, so what arrives is a full pot rather than a plate of grilled meat. Meat that used to be discarded took about seventy-five years to acquire a name of its own.