Cuisine: Japanese Food Primer

As a supplement to my previous bento post, I thought I would cover the basics of Japanese food. Some of the more pleasant things I discovered about Japanese food is that it is typically very easy to make, only occasionally requires specialty equipment, and are usually rather inexpensive as well. Also, most of the ingredients that you would require are usually sold at your local grocery store, and if not, you can purchase them at an Asian market or online.

Like with most types of cuisine, Japanese food tends to use a lot of the same ingredients in most of its dishes: rice/noodles, vegetables, some form of protein, and and a sauce made of soy sauce, sugar, mirin, rice vinegar and/or rice wine. Here is a list of the most essential pantry items: www.justhungry.com/2006/08/back_to_japanes.html.

A typical Japanese breakfast includes an egg (boiled or made into tamago), miso soup with either some tofu or fish, and as much rice as you want. Lunch is often comprised of a light sort of noodle or rice bowl, while dinner is a fair amount larger than the other meals, and may includes things like an entire fish encrusted in salt, tempuras, teriyakies, donburis, and shabu-shabu.

Overall, the only things that might be slightly unfamiliar to the typical Westerner are some of the soy-based products, root vegetables, and seafood products, especially surimi. Surimi is a type of pressed fish cake, not unlike the imitation crab and lobster meet that is sold by Louis Kemp. Also, if you choose to make sushi, it is absolutely necessary that you use sushi grade fish. I'm sure there are a few other things that I'm forgetting, but they're probably not things that are called for regularly. On that note, I'll leave you a few of my favorite resources: Cooking With Dog (yes, you read that correctly) and Kumigar. Cooking With Dog usually presents more traditional, everyday stuff, while Kumigar likes to mix things up with a french pastry twist and Rilakkuma outfit. They're both highly informative, and will show you what options are available to you and how easy making Japanese food really is.

Cooking With Dog: www.youtube.com/user/cookingwithdog/videos

Kumigar: www.youtube.com/user/Kumigar/videos

Make My Sushi: www.makemysushi.com/?utm_expid=3001792-0