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.
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Hamburger steak is a very popular dish in Japan. There are a lot of restaurants that specialize in hamburger steak. We usually have hamburger steak with sides of vegetables and white rice, not with hamburger buns.
The hamburger steak recipe was brought to Japan from Germany. Japanese adjusted the recipe better for Japanese taste. Today I will teach you how to make the “Japanese style” Hamburger Steak, which is the most popular style in Japan.
I will teach you how to make Chicken Hamburger Steak with shiitake mushroom and onion in Japanese style. You can use any kind of vegetables you want in this recipe, and you could use beef instead of chicken if you want.
My mother often cooked it with ground chicken and many kinds of chopped vegetables to make it healthier.
Chicken meat has great taste, is good for digestion, and fortifies your nutrition if you are recovering from being sick. It is higher in amino acids and vitamin A than pork or beef, but has half the fat of pork or beef.
I put grated ginger in the steak because ginger has great flavor and also helps rid the meat of its chicken smell. Good smell is very important in many forms of Japanese cooking so that you can experience great taste, texture, and smell. Also, we serve Hamburger Steak with grated daikon (Japanese white radish) and soy sauce-rice vinegar sauce, which make the dish taste better and helps digestion.
It is very delicious! Enjoy!!
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Today, I introduce you to fried eggplant. This dish is my mother’s original recipe. She used Miso paste and ginger so it is very nutritious and delicious.
Eggplant is low calorie and has polyphenol, which works as an antioxident.
Miso is a fermented food. Recently, there have been some studies suggesting that fermented foods can improve our immunity. Japanese, who live longer than people from any other country, eat a lot of fermented foods, such as Umeboshi (pickled plum), soy sauce, Miso paste, Katsuobushi (dried bonito) and Natto.
Ginger is also very nutritious and healthy. Ginger helps our blood flow, helps speed up our metabolism, and blocks the oxidation process inside our body.
This dish has the great flavor of ginger and juicy chicken and it doesn’t have a strong taste of Miso paste, so I am sure everybody can enjoy it!
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The Japanese recipe is somewhat like the French croquette. We named it Korokke because it is the closest pronunciation using Japanese sounds to croquette. Because of this word borrowing many Japanese thought Korokke was a western food, but nowadays we realize it has become a Japanese food because the Japanese Korokke, while a bit similar to the French croquette, is actually not same.
Korokke is a very popular food for lunch, dinner or a snack. The ingredients are potato, ground meat and onion. Seasoning is only salt and pepper. We can also make vegetable Korokke without meat. My mother sometimes secretly put vegetables which I didn’t like, such as green pepper, celery and so on in the Korokke because it was always delicious! As just described, you can put anything you want for your family’s health or just for taste in a Korokke.
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I am sure many people think Japanese food = Tempura and Sushi.
Today I will teach you how to make Tempura with eggplant.
Once you see this recipe, you can make any kind of Tempura, such as shrimp, squid, fish and many kinds of vegetables, whatever you want.
I chose eggplant this time because it is my favorite Tempura. I like the juicy texture, light sweet taste and low calories!! Eggplant also has polyphenol which works as an antioxident. So it is a good food to eat to help you stay healthy.
Japanese don’t eat Tempura so often because it is deep-fried, and not very healthy if we eat it every day.
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.
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Japanese use Daikon (Japanese white radish) for many dishes. Daikon is high in water, vitamin C and vitamin A, and is a low calorie ingredient. Daikon helps digestion so we sometimes eat fish or meat with grated daikon.
Today I will introduce “Simmered Daikon”. This dish is really easy to cook and delicious! It is one of the best dishes in my mother’s recipes. It is called “Daikon no taitan” just in the Kyoto area (Kansai region) of Japan, so this dish is one representative of Kyoto.
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Daikon (Japanese white radish)
2 ½ cups Kelp Dashi stock
(Recommended Dried Kelp for Dashi stock) Dashi Dried Kelp
Ozouni (Rice-cake soup) is a celebratory dish, and one of the dishes we eat on New Year’s day.
When we eat this, traditionally we give thanks for last year’s harvest and wish for a good harvest in the coming year and for the safety of our family.
Interestingly, the ingredients are different depending on the region. Some people dissolve White Miso (Soy bean paste) in the broth. Some people use sweet rice cake which has sweet bean paste in it.
Today I introduce my mother’s Ozouni. I use normal rice cake, Daikon (Japanese white radish) and carrots. This makes the dish more celebratory because in Japan we usually use red and white color combinations in celebratory situations.
In Japan, New Year’s day is the most important day of the year and many Japanese spend New Year’s day with family, feeling grateful for everything and wishing for a good year for everyone.
Have a happy New Year!!
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Today I will show you how to cook “Kelp Dashi stock”.
Kelp is very nutritious and delicious when prepared correctly. It is low calorie, high in iodine, minerals, and fucoidan. It is good for making your skin smooth, hair and nails strong, and also helps to treat constipation. It is also a great food for people on diets. It is good for our health.
Significantly, while Kelp is gooey and chewy, because of its nutritional elements and fucoidan, Kelp dashi stock is not gooey and doesn’t have a strong smell so you can use it for many dishes.
I introduced “Anchovy Dashi stock” before. These two dashi stocks differ in taste and flavor. We use Anchovy Dashi stock when we want a stronger fish taste in dishes. On the other hand Kelp Dashi stock is usually used for dishes which we want to enjoy the individual tastes of ingredients such as vegetables, fish and so on. Of course, it is good for vegetarians and people who don’t like Anchovy Dashi stock smell.
We usually use the kelp for other dishes after we cook Dashi stock. This time I will use the leftover kelp to introduce a side dish which we call “Shio Konbu (Salted Kelp)”. Japanese usually eat it with cooked white rice. Shio Konbu is also great in your salad. It makes your salad more nutritious, healthy and delicious!!
{Ingredients (for Dashi Stock)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
Miso soup is also an important dish in the Japanese diet. Miso (Soybean paste) is a traditional fermented food product. It is a very nutritious food and may help keep the doctor away. In fact there have been many studies of the effects of Miso on human health.
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, so most people have miso soup during every meal.
Here I will introduce onion and shiitake miso soup. You can cook many other kinds of miso soup such as tofu and seaweed, Japanese radish and deep fried tofu, potato and onion, clam and green onion, and so on. Depending on the ingredients you want to use you may need to slightly change the amount of miso and the amount of cooking Sake based on taste.
{Ingredients (For 2 people)} *Click BLUE TEXT to link to the product on Amazon*
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