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How to cook "with visual instructions" "using familiar ingredients from your local grocery stores" healthy, traditional and delicious Japanese dishes!!

Tag Archives: gluten free


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Delicious Braised Eggplant (Vegan/Vegetarian/Gluten-Free)

Following the previous post “This is what I call a great traditional Japanese dish!”,

This is what I call a great traditional Japanese dish!(Vegan/Vegetarian/Gluten-Free)

I will introduce you to one more traditional Japanese vegetable side dish which is called “Braised Eggplant”. This is also from Buddhist cuisine. It is very delicious, healthy and low-calorie!

If you like eggplant, I highly recommend you try this! You can enjoy the flavorful, tender, and yummy eggplant. The recipe is very easy and very traditional. I simmer eggplant in Japanese Dashi stock, soy sauce, cooking Sake and Mirin. If you like the flavor in Japanese dishes  you should keep soy sauce, cooking Sake, Mirin and Dashi stock on hand (here is my Dashi stock recipe in PDF: Homemade Anchovy Dashi Stock, Kelp Dashi stock ) (also some Asian markets carry useful Dashi stock powder). If you want to try more healthy dishes but you are not a big fan of Japanese flavors, you can just simmer the eggplant in vegetable stock and season with a pinch of salt and pepper. This is also a healthy and low-calorie dish. Unfortunately, however, if you cook it this way you will not get the protein that we get from soy sauce. In fact, my family doesn’t eat soy beans often, we usually get the soy nutrition from soy sauce, Tofu, Miso (soy bean paste), Natto (fermented soy beans), soy milk and so on.

In this recipe, I didn’t peel the eggplant because one of the important nutrients, Anthocyanin (antioxidant), is found in high amounts in eggplant skin. If you don’t like the gooey texture that the skin adds you can peel the eggplant.

{Ingredients (servings 2)}

½ Eggplant

1 cup Kelp Dashi Stock
(Recommended Dried Kelp for Dashi stock) Dashi Dried Kelp

2 Tbsp. Soy Sauce
(Recommended Gluten-Free Soy Sauce)Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

2 Tbsp. Cooking Sake

2 Tbsp. Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine

Here is my recipe in PDF (4 MB): Braised Eggplant

Here is my “Kelp Dashi Stock” recipe in PDF: Kelp Dashi stock


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This is what I call a great traditional Japanese dish!(Vegan/Vegetarian/Gluten-Free)

People have use this recipe since about 1300 years ago. This dish is typical Buddhist cuisine. Buddhist cuisine is cooked based on Buddhist concepts. The ingredients are mainly beans and vegetables. But the dishes are flavorful and nutritious because they were created to charge the energy of Samurai.

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This recipe is a basic Japanese dish in which I cut vegetables and simmer in Japanese Dashi stock. The Dashi stock is the most important ingredient. If you can’t prepare Dashi stock, you can use vegetable stock or chicken stock as a substitute for Japanese Dashi stock. Of course the flavor will change but it will still be healthy! In a similar way, you can use white wine as a substitute for cooking Sake.

This is a side dish so you can have it along with or in place of a salad with your meal!

{Ingredients (servings 2)}

1 Carrot

3 Shiitake Mushrooms

½ bunch Fresh Spinach

2 Tbsp. Soy Sauce
(Recommended Gluten-Free Soy Sauce)Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

2 Tbsp. Cooking Sake

1 cup Kelp Dashi stock
(Recommended Dried Kelp for Dashi stock) Dashi Dried Kelp
*Any kind of Dashi stock is okay*
(Recommended instant bonito Dashi powder)Ajinomoto – Hon Dashi

¼ tsp. Salt

Here is my recipe in PDF (5 MB): Braised Vegetables

Here is my Kelp Dashi stock recipe in PDF: Kelp Dashi stock

Here is my Anchovy Dashi stock recipe in PDF: Homemade Anchovy Dashi Stock


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Non-Spicy “Mapo-Tofu”(Gluten-Free)

Mapo-Tofu is a popular Chinese dish. This recipe is totally my mother’s creation based on Mapo-Tofu. My mother came up with this recipe because the original dish is so spicy and I couldn’t handle it. This dish is very healthy because it has great protein, which comes from a combination of meat and tofu, so we always had this Non-Spicy Mapo-Tofu in our house.

The recipe is so easy to cook. It basically involves cooking ground chicken and tofu in chicken broth and then seasoning it in the same pan.

You can also use any kind of ground meat and any kind of broth in this recipe.

I recommend you enjoy tasting everything on the plate, the meat, the tofu, and the soup flavor! Because of the finished presentation you may think of it is a soup dish, but we eat it as a main dish with steamed rice.

Enjoy your new healthy and yummy dish!!

{Ingredients (servings 2)}

7 oz. (half pack) firm Tofu

½ lb. ground Chicken

1 tsp. minced Garlic (about 1 clove)

1 tsp. minced Ginger

2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil

1 cup low-sodium Chicken Broth
(Recommended Gluten-Free Chicken Broth)Reduced Sodium Chicken Flavor Broth

2 Tbsp. Soy Sauce
(Recommended Gluten-Free Soy Sauce)Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

1 Tbsp. Cooking Sake

1 Tbsp. Potato Starch or Corn Starch (for slurry)

2 Tbsp. water (for slurry)

1 tsp. Pure Sesame Oil

Here is my recipe in PDF (6 MB): Non-Spicy Mapo-Tofu


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Incredibly Flavorful “Ginger Chicken”(Gluten-Free)

This is an incredibly flavorful homemade chicken dish marinated mainly with ginger and soy sauce.

As you know, ginger is extremely healthy.

It has Cineol (known generally as Eucalyptol), which is  a scent ingredient. Cineol increases our appetite and makes our body recover from fatigue. Because of this, I eat ginger a lot in the summer time.

When you cook ginger, Gingerol, which is flavor ingredient, changes chemically to Shogaol. This warms up our body and increases our metabolism. So I also eat ginger in winter time. I use ginger in my meals any time to be healthier!!

In this recipe I use chicken, but you can use pork instead of chicken if you prefer. If you use pork just make sure it is sliced thinly.

Also, you can use white wine as a substitute for cooking Sake. When you use cooking Sake, however, you get more wonderful Japanese flavor.

Enjoy your new healthy dish!!

{Ingredients (servings 2)}

2 Chicken Breast (boneless and skinless)

1 Onion

1 Tbsp. Grated Ginger

4 Tbsp. Soy Sauce
(Recommended Gluten-Free Soy Sauce)Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

2 Tbsp. Mirin Sweet Cooking Sake

4 Tbsp. Cooking Sake

1 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil

Here is my recipe in PDF (5 MB): Ginger Chicken


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Quick, Easy and Yum!! “Microwave Chicken Roll” (Gluten-Free)

This is a delicious chicken breast and vegetables recipe. The best point to this recipe is that it is very quick and tasty!! You don’t need to heat oil up or preheat your oven. Just prepare the ingredients and microwave!

This is totally my mother’s original recipe. She was a great cook and her dishes were awesome. That doesn’t mean she always took time to cook. She was also working so she kept creating her recipes to be quicker and more delicious!!

If you have chicken meat, you don’t need to go grocery shopping to cook this recipe. I just use colorful vegetables from my refrigerator. You can choose any vegetables you want.

I recommend that you cook this recipe on week nights when you don’t have enough time to cook more time consuming dishes. And when you keep the leftovers in the refrigerator, you can eat it for your breakfast or lunch next day, which also saves your time!

{Ingredients (servings 2)}

2 pieces boneless and skinless Chicken Breast

½ Bell Pepper

½ Carrot

2 Tbsp. Cooking Sake or White Wine

Pinch of Salt and Black Pepper

Here is the my recipe in PDF (5 MB): Microwave Chicken Roll


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Very Popular “Rice-Omelet”(Vegetarian/Gluten-Free)

This is an original Japanese omelet style dish. We call “Om-rice” in Japanese. About a hundred years ago, a Japanese restaurant made this recipe as a meal for the restaurant’s employees to have quickly and get enough nutrition to work from one plate. Nowadays, this is one of Japanese kids’ favorite dishes because it is so delicious!!

The ingredients are rice, vegetables and egg. We always season with salt, pepper and ketchup but if you don’t like using ketchup, season with just salt and pepper which also would be great!

I use onion, carrot and fresh shiitake mushrooms as my vegetable ingredients. You can use any kind of mushrooms if you can’t find shiitake mushrooms. In Japan, shiitake mushrooms are the most common mushroom. We use fresh shiitake mushrooms, and also dried ones. I use the two kinds of shiitake mushroom quite differently because the flavors are totally different; when I want to add much more shiitake flavor to my dish such as simmered dishes, I use the dried ones. When I cook Japanese dishes for which I want to add just fresh mushrooms, I use the fresh one.

You can add any kind of vegetables to the Om-rice that you like, as long as they are chopped to the same size as the other vegetables.

Enjoy your new omelet!!

{Ingredients (servings 4)}

1 Onion

1 Carrot

3 Shiitake Mushrooms

1 clove Garlic

1 tsp. Salt

¼ tsp. Black Pepper

3 cups (1.5 pint) Steamed Rice

¾ cup Gluten-Free Ketchup

8 eggs (total)

2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil (total)

Here is my recipe in PDF (5 MB): Rice Omelet


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Chicken Tenderloin with Delicious Plum Sauce! (Gluten-Free)

This is a very easy and tasty traditional side dish. Mainly we eat it in the summer time because it is cold and contains pickled plum.

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Pickled plum (Umeboshi) is a Japanese traditional healthy food. The recipe for pickled plum is to salt fresh plums and then dry them under the sun. Pickled plum has protein, calcium, iron, vitamins and so on. We eat it very often, but especially when we feel tired, we have a sore throat, and most importantly when we want to prevent heat stroke while outside in summer time. Pickled plum also has antibacterial effect so we sometimes put it on rice in our lunch box to keep the rice from going bad.

This plum sauce contains sesame seeds so it is a very nutritious and flavorful sauce. You can use this sauce for other meat or fish dishes. And if you add olive oil to the sauce, you can use it as a dressing for your salads.

Chicken tenderloin has great taste and nutrition. It doesn’t take much time to cook but if you over cook it, the meat will be hard. In this recipe, I show how to get tender chicken tenderloin. If you use this method, you can always get good tender chicken for any of your  dishes.

Enjoy this divine chicken dish!!

{Ingredients (servings 2)}

3 pieces Chicken Tenderloin

3 Pickled Plums

2 tsp. White Roasted Sesame Seeds

1 tsp. Soy Sauce
(Recommended Gluten-Free Soy Sauce)Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

1 tsp. Cooking Sake

Boiled Water (for boiling tenderloin)

Here is my recipe in PDF (4 MB): Chicken Tenderloin with Plum Sauce


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The easiest TOFU dish! (Vegan/Vegetarian/Gluten-Free)

This is the quickest, easiest, healthiest summer time side dish. It’s just cold Tofu with green onion and ginger.

This is a dish you might have when you want to add one more nutritious dish to your meal; when you don’t have any time to cook in the morning; when you don’t have a big appetite; or when you want to eat late at night…

Tofu has a lot of nutrition. As you know, tofu is high in great protein so it is often used as a meat substitute for vegetarians. Also tofu is low calorie (33 kcal / 2 oz.) so it is good food for people who care about their’ diet.

Ginger is used as a medicine (we call it Kampo) in Eastern Medicine. It may improve our immune system  and also has antibacterial and antioxidant properties.

Green onion is high in vitamins and carotene. It also has antibacterial properties. So These two vegetables are great to make you more energetic and healthy.

Serving: 1

Total Cooking Time: 5 minutes

Total Calorie: 49 kcal

[Ingredients]

・1/6 pack(2~3 oz.) of firm Tofu (33 kcal)

・1 Tbsp. of minced Green Onion (5 kcal)

・1/2 tsp. of grated Ginger (1 kcal)

・1 Tbsp. of Soy Sauce (10 kcal)
(Recommended Gluten-Free Soy Sauce)Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

Cut washed tofu into small size and transfer to a plate.

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Add green onion and ginger on the tofu.

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Drizzle with soy sauce.

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Sautéed Chicken with Miso (Gluten-Free)

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.

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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.

{Ingredients (servings 2)}

1 small Green Bell Pepper

1 small Eggplant

5 pieces Chicken Tenderloin

3 Tbsp. ORGANIC Mild Miso Paste

2 Tbsp. Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Wine

2 Tbsp. Soy Sauce
(Recommended Gluten-Free Soy Sauce)Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

1 Tbsp. Cooking Sake

1 Tbsp. Sugar

1 Tbsp. Pure Sesame Oil

2 Tbsp. Vegetable oil

Here is my recipe in PDF (6 MB): Chicken Tenderloin Saute with Miso


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Gluten-Free Chicken Dumpling

Shaomai (Chinese dumpling) is basically Chinese dim sum, which is pork meat wrapped in a skin made from flour.

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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!!

{Ingredients (15 pieces)}

1 small Onion

3 Dried Shiitake Mushrooms

4 Tbsp. Potato Starch or Corn Starch

½ lb. Ground Chicken

½ tsp. Salt

1 Tbsp. Cooking Sake

1 Tbsp. Soy Sauce REDUCED SODIUM [Gluten Free] (Organic)

½ Tbsp. Pure Sesame Oil

1 tsp. grated Ginger

4 pieces Rice Paper Skin (made from rice and tapioca)

Some Green leaves such as cabbage (for keeping dumplings from sticking)

Here is my recipe in PDF (7 MB): Chicken Dumpling