Tagliatelle with shoyu butter and scallop frills


A Japanese-style pasta dish using scallop frills (hotate himo) and butter shoyu… Enjoy this easy and flavorful dried sauce!

Scallops are often appreciated for their round and white muscle, which is their most culinary prized part. Their frills (called ホタテ ヒモ – hotate himo; hotate means “scallop” and himo means “small intestine” in Japanese) are literally everything else that belongs to the scallop: the adjacent muscles and organs.

These frill things are really, really tasty, and very cheap to boot. They taste a little bit stronger than the adductor muscle part – I personally find both delicious! It is a nice way to get some lovely seafood taste without going bankrupt…

For this recipe, I made an original yoshoku-style pasta sauce using butter shoyu (a secret trick that I use for a lot of recipes), chopped green onions and Parmesan cheese. My pasta of choice was fresh tagliatelle; this dish was served with some grilled salmon but that is just an optional extra touch. This doesn’t take longer than 20 minutes to be prepared and it’s easy to love every single bite of it: try out this recipe, you’re going to be surprised!



Ingredient list

Average measure for 1 serving


  1. 200g of tagliatelle
  2. 100g of scallop frills, cut in bite size pieces
  3. 20g of butter
  4. 4tbsp of shoyu
  5. Green onion, chopped
  6. Parmesan cheese
  7. Salt, pepper


recipe step list grid


  1. Drain the scallop frills, sprinkle some salt then remove as much water as possible from them.
  2. Cook the pasta until al dente.
  3. Using a large frying pan or skillet, add the shoyu and set the fire to medium heat.
  4. When the shoyu starts releasing a nice charred smell, add the butter and swirl the pan to distribute it evenly.
  5. After that, add the scallops frills and cook until done.
  6. Season with pepper.
  7. Add the tagliatelle and toss to coat it with the butter shoyu sauce.
  8. Sprinkle the green onion and mix everything.
  9. Finally, serve the pasta with Parmesan cheese.


Recipe tip list grid


Drain the frills well, otherwise they might release too much liquid in the pan while cooking them;


I usually undercook the pasta just a little because it will finish cooking in the frying pan with the butter shoyu sauce;


Leaving the shoyu to burn in the pan at the beginning greatly enhances the flavor of this dish!

Hotate himo + pasta = nice combo!

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