How to cook "with visual instructions" "using familiar ingredients from your local grocery stores" healthy, traditional and delicious Japanese dishes!!
Everybody will like this dish! Fried chicken and cheese. To make this dish healthy I use spinach and chicken tenderloin. You can use any kind of cheese you want. Japanese sometimes cook this recipe with chicken breast or sliced pork. I choose chicken tenderloin because it’s healthy and cooks quickly.
Also, you can put anything into this recipe as long as the chicken is prepared properly. For example, basil leaf, potato, carrot, green beans and so on. When you prefer not to eat fried food, see the post “Simple Chicken Roll” recipe.
This sauté of vegetables and meat is a Japanese homemade main dish which is liked by everybody. There are some similar dishes in Chinese cuisine but the taste is totally different from this recipe. I use chicken tenderloin, I season the meat and vegetables with Miso paste and soy sauce, and I don’t use much oil, so it is flavorful, has a great light taste, and is never greasy.
You can choose any kind of meat for this dish, such as beef or pork. I prefer chicken tenderloin because it is low fat, low calorie, and high in nutrition. Chicken tenderloin is cooked quickly so it doesn’t take time to cook. When we cook it the right way, the texture is amazingly soft. Therefore, in this recipe I am very careful about the cooking time.
You can also add more vegetables to this dish, but at the very least you should use green bell pepper and eggplant because these two vegetables and Miso go perfectly together. Green bell pepper and eggplant are summer vegetables which make our bodies cool down. Eating summer vegetables in the summer brings us great effects.
Shaomai (Chinese dumpling) is basically Chinese dim sum, which is pork meat wrapped in a skin made from flour.
In my recipe I used ground chicken meat and summer rolls skin, which is made from rice starch and tapioca starch. The taste is definitely amazing, and it is healthy and gluten-free!
It takes about 60 minutes to prepare and cook this recipe, but it is worth the effort because this dumpling has great quality protein and vitamins, and it is very delicious! You can have this as a main dish with rice because rice is a great match!
You can get summer rolls skin at many grocery stores in the US so please try it!!
Japanese homemade omelets are slightly different from American omelets. We wrap egg around sautéd meat and vegetables. We also have American omelets in Japan which are called “plane omelets”. But when my mother made an omelet for lunch or dinner, it was always the omelet from this recipe.
The ingredients are ground meat, onion, carrot, mushroom and egg. You can use any kind of meat such as chicken, beef, pork and so on. The seasoning is so simple. It is just salt and pepper. You can also add ketchup to taste. It is delicious!! I am sure you will like it.
This simple recipe is lower in calories than American cheese and meat omelets. But we have to be careful about the oil and butter that we use when we cook because the amount of oil and butter often used in American omelets is much higher in calories than we think. If you care about calories, I highly recommend choosing the right products and using a measuring spoon for oil when you cook.
Just in case, I am going to include normal product’s calories. If you use “light” or “reduced fat” products, please check the package.
1 Tbsp. of oil: 111kcal
1 Tbsp. of margarine: 91kcal
1 Tbsp. of butter: 89kcal
However, you can’t tell if an oil is healthy or not just by looking at the calories. It is important that we also think about the ingredients, nutrition, glycemic index and so on.
Spring rolls are a kind of Dim sum, which is Chinese food. As you know, spring rolls are served as appetizers at Chinese restaurants, but in Japanese homemade dishes they are actually a main dish.
Unfortunately, I can’t find spring roll wrappers near my house so I made from scratch with flour and water. Please remember Spring Roll wrappers are not egg roll wrappers (actually egg rolls are not popular in Japan), or rice paper, which is a Vietnamese style roll. Forunately, cooking spring roll wrappers is easy, but if you find spring roll wrappers at the store, it is definitely a time saver.
I used chicken, green cabbage, eggplant and mushroom for the filling. You can use anything you want, such as carrot, asparagus, leaves, potato, tofu, cheese, rice noodle, beef, pork, fish, shellfish and so on. Therefore, I can choose healthy ingredients as much as I want to.
Fried Wheat Noodles are actually traditional cuisine on the Okinawa islands, the southernmost prefecture of Japan. My mother and father visited Okinawa for their honeymoon 45 years ago and my mother learned about this dish at that time. (Until 1972 Okinawa was part of the united states so they needed to bring their passport. It surprised me!) Okinawa is a beautiful group of islands. Blue ocean, big sky, majestic forests, pure-hearted people, calm weather…I love Okinawa very much.
This recipe is called “Chanpuru” in Okinawa, which means frying mixture of various ingredients. In every age we are busy so traditional Okinawa people made this “Chanpuru” recipe which is quick. We can cook it with any combination of ingredients in the refrigerator, such as egg, vegetables, tofu, fish, meat and so on.
As I said, you don’t need much time for grocery shopping and cooking. Please try it when you are too busy to cook something else for dinner!!
In Japan, we sometimes cook hamburger steak with Tofu because we can make it healthier—lower in calories and fat. Tofu hamburger steak is mainly made from ground meat, tofu and vegetables.
Today I introduce you to a simple delicious tofu hamburger steak recipe. The ingredients are chicken, tofu and green onion. It is healthy, delicious and also the texture is amazingly soft because of the tofu’s texture. Tofu is high in quality protein so this steak has great nutrition!
Japanese Pan-Fried Dumpling (Gyoza) comes from Chinese food. The recipe was slightly adjusted for Japanese tastes. It is a very popular dish in Japan. Therefore, we have a lot of restaurants for dumplings and also we cook homemade dumplings. There are many ways to cook dumplings, such as pan-fry, steam, deep-fry and boil.
Today I introduce you to pan-fried dumpling which is the most popular way to cook dumplings in Japan.
In this recipe I show you how to make a dumpling wrapper, but you can also find prepared dumpling wrappers at Asian markets and they are easy to cook with.
This time I used ground chicken for the filling but you can use pork, beef or shrimp instead of chicken. Also in regard to vegetables for the filling, you can use any vegetables you want, such as cabbage, mushroom, tofu, herbs and so on.
My mother used to cook with just chicken and green onion for the filling because she said we enjoyed the chicken taste, and we did!
This “Sushi Canapé” recipe is totally original and great for a potluck. The ingredients are easy and it is a simple finger food.
The manner for making a sushi roll for this dish is not traditional. I came up with an easy way to roll which everybody can do without fail. But the taste is totally like regular sushi! You can top it with whatever you want such as smoke salmon, fish row, vegetables and so on. Once you know this recipe, you can serve Japanese sushi to your family and friends!
Enjoy your sushi roll!!
{Ingredients (15~20 canapés)}
2 pints Steamed Rice
3 beaten eggs
¼ lb. Ground Chicken
1 Avocado
¼ tsp. Wasabi Paste or Organic Wasabi Powder(combine with water to make Wasabi paste)
This very flavorful soup brings you great nutrition because the ingredients are chicken, green onion, ginger, dried shiitake mushroom and kelp. This dish is high in vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin E, vitamin D, minerals, beta-carotene, allicin, calcium, protein and so on. Also it is low calorie and low fat. This dish makes you warm, gives your metabolism a boost, and helps improve your immunity so it is great to help you recover from sickness and get back a good appetite.
I highly recommend eating kelp occasionally. Recently, it is easy to get dried kelp at many grocery stores and at most Asian markets in the US. Japanese use kelp for Dashi stock and side dish like pickles. Dashi stock is used as seasoning in Japanese dishes. We use several kinds of Dashi stock such as dried anchovy, dried bonito, dried shiitake, dried kelp and so on. The kelp Dashi stock is great to compliment exquisite tasting ingredients. Kelp helps maintain your body’s alkaline. Also kelp has a good amount of fucoidan and iodine which are essential nutrients (in moderation) for humans.
{Ingredients (servings 2)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*