How to cook "with visual instructions" "using familiar ingredients from your local grocery stores" healthy, traditional and delicious Japanese dishes!!
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!!
Sesame is high in arginine, oleic acid, linoleum acid, sesamin, and it has great quality protein, iron, niacin and vitamin B. Sesame has high antioxidant properties due to vitamin E and linoleum acid. This means sesame may improve our immune system. Another important ingredient in sesame is Lignan. Lignan helps liver function and cholesterol depletion. I highly recommend to have 1 Tbsp. of sesame per a day. Of course, having it in this salad dressing is a delicious way to eat sesame.
In this recipe I will also introduce you to Tofu Salad, which goes great with sesame dressing. It is quick, delicious and very nutritious! When you want to add more protein, vitamins and minerals to your meal, please try this easy quick delicious salad!!
{Ingredients (servings 2)}
*Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
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.
This is seasoned steamed rice with salmon, egg, dried seaweed and sesame. It is very delicious and looks beautiful with a colorful presentation. Japanese eat steamed rice in at least 2 meals every day. But children tend to leave over steamed rice, which has only a slightly sweet taste, so Japanese mothers cook seasoned steamed rice to help get their children to eat a bowl of rice. This recipe is just mixing steamed rice and other ingredients, so there is no need for special equipment. Buy steamed rice at a Chinese restaurant and you can cook this at home in 30 minutes.
However, recently there are many concerns about farmed salmon’s effect on human health. Salmon has worms so farmed salmon is said to become contaminated from drugs to rid salmon farms of worms. People say this has contaminated farmed salmon and may effect our health, such as immune compromise, hypometabolism, deterioration in brain function and so on. Please choose wild salmon or a good untreated farmed salmon. By the way, wild salmon can have worms so we do not eat it raw. The worms disappear when Salmon is heated to over 140F for some minutes or frozen at under -4F for 48 hours.
The yam has a sticky texture because of Mucin, one of it’s ingredients. Especially when the yam is grated, the texture become more smooth and sticky, and this sticky texture gives our bodies some great benefits, such as protecting our mucous membranes in the stomach, protecting our body from some viruses and so on. Mucin is a soluble fiber and helps keep water in our cells.
Traditionally, people say the grated Japanese yam loosened phlegm, so I used to eat it when I caught a cough. Additionally, the yam is easy to digest so it is good food when you are sick.
It is easy, simple and quick. Nothing difficult. Just grate the yam and mix with some Japanese Dashi stock.
{Ingredients (servings 2)}
5-inch length Japanese Yam
¼ cup Kelp Dashi Stock
(Recommended Dried Kelp for Dashi stock) Dashi Dried Kelp
Today I introduce you to the creamy salmon soup made with soy milk, bite size salmon and mushrooms. You can use regular milk instead of soy milk if you prefer. You can also use any kind of mushrooms for this recipe.
Salmon is high in protein which is good for digestion and absorption. Also it is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which are docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). DHA activates brain cells and EPA improves blood flow and reduces fat and bad cholesterol. In addition, salmon is high in minerals, vitamin Bs, and vitamin D. I can’t say strongly enough that salmon has great antioxidant effects, which are caused by astaxanthin and dimethylaminoethanol (DMAE), and this is very good for you. Salmon’s red color is carotenoid, a natural colorant which is called astaxanthin. Removing active oxygen inside the body is one of best ways to be healthy. Recently, however, we see mostly farm-raised salmon in stores and the salmon may be controlled to make their color brighter. So you should choose wild salmon if you can. Astaxanthin in salmon is not breakable under heat and also improves absorption when we eat with healthy oil so I highly recommend cooking salmon with olive oil or butter.
Enjoy the healthy delicious salmon soup!!
{Ingredients (servings 2)}
½ lb. Salmon
8 oz. Sliced Baby Bella Mushrooms (any kind of mushrooms can be used)
It is a kind of potato that grows straight into the ground so it has a long shape. (It sometimes grows to more than 3 feet).
In Japan, people have eaten the yam for about 3000 years. Therefore, the yam is very important to the Japanese diet.
We can eat this yam raw because it has a gelatinized starch and some of the nutrition in this type of yam are breaks under heat. The Japanese yam is rich in diastase, a digestive enzyme which helps our digestion and absorption of nutrition into the body. Also the yam is high in vitamin B1, vitamin C, calcium, potassium and mucin.
Mucin is soluble fiber and helps keep water in our cells. Therefore, it protects our mucous membranesin the stomach, and protects our body from some viruses. Some studies say the yam also prevents dry eyes because mucin is an ingredient in tears. Mucin gives the yam a great smooth, sticky texture, especially when it is grated. This is great for our body. It heals our tiredness and helps our digestion, so the yam is great for your diet when you are recovering from being sick, when you have no appetite, and so on.
(The yam has Calcium oxalate, so it can sometimes make you feel itchy on your hands or around your lips when you touch it, but you feel better as soon as you wash the itchy part with acid water (a mixture of vinegar and water). In rare case some people are allergic to the yam, so if it gives you a weird feeling inside your mouth, you have to stop eating it and call a doctor.)
Today, I introduce you to Japanese yam salad. It is very simple and easy. I always use pickled plum sauce because it is extremely healthy and is a fermented food. But you can use any dressing you want, because the yam doesn’t have strong flavor so it won’t change the taste of your favorite dressing taste!
This recipe is not traditional Japanese food. We occasionally have it as a hospital meal, school meal and so on. This is good for digestion and low fat and low calorie. Therefore, we sometimes have it as a diet meal. Also some hospitals serve this kind of dish to patients who will soon have surgery, because it reduces visceral fat before the surgery.
Cabbage in spring has a very good taste so it is traditional we have many cabbage dishes in the spring.
In this recipe, the cooking is really easy and takes less than 30 minutes. Significantly, some nutrition from cabbages can break down under heat so please cook for as short as possible after adding cabbage as per the instructions. Also, Cabbage can be eaten raw but it is hard to eat a lot of it that way. So I highly recommend this soup that cooking for less than 20 minutes after adding the cabbage and including vegetables in all soups.
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.
“Vegetable Mix Tempura”, which is called “Kakiage” in Japanese, is a traditional Japanese recipe. We enjoy this tempura on steamed rice, on Japanese Soba noodle, on Japanese Udon noodle, or just the tempura itself.
In Japan, people always try to make the tempura with a great crunchy texture. With this recipe, you can cook crunchy tempura easily. The seasoning is only salt, the vegetables are tender and the batter is crunchy so you can really enjoy more vegetables. Also, the recipe is very simple. I just use 1 skillet, 1 bowl, a cutting board and a knife. So If you have kids who don’t like vegetables very much, you might want to try to cook this recipe!
I used in this recipe.
Your Home for Homemade Japanese Food 