How to cook "with visual instructions" "using familiar ingredients from your local grocery stores" healthy, traditional and delicious Japanese dishes!!
Rice porridge is an important dish for Japanese. We have the dish when we are sick, when we have no appetite, or when we want to heal the stomach after overeating such as after new year celebrations.
Rice porridge is easy to cook (just put washed dried rice and water in a pan and cook!) and you can season it however you want. We usually eat it with salt or pickles. You can also put sugar and butter like oatmeal or cereal.
{Ingredients (Serves 2)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
Today I introduce you to Takikomi Gohan which is seasoned rice with vegetables. It has a similar taste to fried rice, but it is steamed so a lot healthier. You can add vegetables (preferably root vegetables), shellfish, and/or chicken, and seasoning to the rice and cook just like cooking white rice.
The basic arrangement for many Japanese meals is called “Ichi-juu, San-sai”, and consists of one bowl of cooked rice, one kind of soup, and three vegetable or fish side dishes. Takikomi Gohan includes rice and some vegetables or fish so it is a fuss-free dish to help arrange Ichi-jiru, San-sai. And, or course, it just plain delicious! Also steamed rice absorbs the Umami of the ingredients so it is very nutritious and delicious!!
We sometimes have Takikomi Gohan as a Bento (boxed lunch) because it is tasty even when it is cold.
This time I use Shiitake mushroom, Daikon, Carrot and Snow pea with Kelp Dashi stock. So it has lots of vitamins, minerals, carotene and fucoidan. Dried Shiitake mushroom has vitamin D so we might want to eat winter time which has short sunshine hours.
{Ingredients (for 2 people)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
Gomoku-Chirashi is a traditional Japanese home dish which is delicious and nutritious, and a kind of Chirashi-sushi. We enjoy it at parties with family at home, such as on New Year and Girl’s day (March 3rd).
The recipe here does not use fish or fish roe, but rather vegetables. We think dishes should have colorful ingredients such as red, green, yellow, brown and white so you can use any colorful vegetables you want.
Before the Japanese had refrigerators they used this recipe to preserve food.
{Ingredients for Sushi-Rice (For 2 people)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
I decided to do my first post on one of the most important ingredients in many Japanese dishes, Japanese rice. If you have a very good rice cooker you can skip this post and move onto the next recipe, but for anyone without a very good rice cooker this recipe should be helpful. Click on the link below for the illustrated recipe in PDF format.
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