Asian

Asian Recipes

813 recipes. Page 19 of 34

Curry, stir-fry noodles, and Asian recipes

Nakami Jiru (Okinawan Clear Pork Offal Soup)

Strips of pork stomach and intestine fill the bowl, yet the broth tastes light and clear, led by bonito and mild pork rather than any offal smell. That clarity comes from bringing the offal to a boil in fresh water and discarding the cloudy liquid again and again, then simmering it for about 2 hours until tender. Salt and a touch of soy sauce season the broth without darkening it, and hihatsu, Okinawan long pepper, finishes each bowl. Once reserved for New Year, celebrations and memorial gatherings, it is now an everyday soup as well.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 45min Cook 180min 4 servings

Noodles Hard

Khanom Jeen Nam Ya (Thai Fermented Rice Noodles in Fish Curry)

Poached white fish gets mashed fine and stirred into a red curry and coconut milk sauce, where the fish disappears into the gravy instead of sitting in chunks. Its poaching water, scented with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, returns to the pot as the stock and keeps a herbal note under the richness of the coconut. Fish sauce and palm sugar set the salty-sweet balance. The rice noodles stay plain: they are boiled, rinsed, and simply drowned in hot sauce. All the seasoning has to come from the curry, which should be loose enough to run between the strands. In Thailand the plate comes with raw bean sprouts, morning glory, green chili, and lime for each diner to mix in. The dish began at royal banquets, yet today it is ordinary market-stall food.

Prep 25min Cook 30min 4 servings

Asian Easy

Chicken Curry

Chunky potato, carrot, and onion make this look like a familiar home-style curry, but the sauce is built on curry powder and coconut milk rather than a flour-and-butter roux. Starch from the potatoes and the reduced coconut milk thicken it without any flour, and reheated the next day it tastes deeper than on the first.

Prep 15min Cook 35min 4 servings

Rice Easy

Mehari-zushi, Takana-Wrapped Rice Balls

Salt-pickled takana mustard leaves wrap each large rice ball completely, and every bite brings the salty leaf and soy-seasoned rice together. In southern Wakayama these were a portable meal for forestry workers in the mountains and fishers at sea, easy to hold because of the leaf wrapper. Several explanations for the name survive: the mouth opening wide for a big bite, eyes widening at the taste, or the rice sealed with no gaps. Even the thick stems are used, chopped, seasoned, and mixed into the rice.

🍱 Lunchbox

Prep 45min Cook 45min 3 servings

Desserts Medium

Sata Andagi Okinawan Doughnuts

Small balls of stiff, egg-rich dough sink in fairly low oil, rise after 20 to 30 seconds, then roll over on their own as one side splits open like a tulip. Okinawa's doughnut is thought to draw on Chinese fried sweets such as kaikou xiao. Because it keeps relatively well in a hot climate, it became both an everyday snack and a fixture at important Ryukyu ceremonies.

Prep 25min Cook 25min 15 servings

Soups Medium

Natto Jiru Ground Natto Miso Soup

Natto is ground in a mortar until no whole beans are left, then stirred into miso soup, and the broth turns softly thick with the fermented aroma spread evenly through it. It is a Yamagata winter home dish from a season when fresh food was scarce, made with stored foods like dried taro stems (imogara) and salted mountain vegetables. In some areas it was also served at New Year, for Nanakusa, or at Daikoku-sama observances.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 35min Cook 30min 5 servings

Noodles Medium

Northern Thai Coconut Curry Noodles

Egg noodles show up twice in one bowl: boiled underneath and fried crisp on top, giving soft and crunchy textures in the same spoonful. This coconut curry noodle soup comes from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, with chicken thighs simmered gently in red curry and coconut milk until the meat falls apart. Sliced shallot, lime and cilantro cut through the richness.

Prep 20min Cook 30min 2 servings

Asian Medium

Chicken Korma (Creamy Cashew Curry)

Soaked cashews, ground smooth and stirred over low heat with yogurt and cream, make a thick sauce with little chili heat. The brown color comes from onions fried for a long time and then blended in.

Prep 20min Cook 35min 4 servings

Rice Easy

Mitsuba Oyakodon (Japanese Chicken Egg Rice Bowl with Mitsuba Herb)

This oyakodon, chicken thigh and onion simmered in dashi, soy and mirin and set with egg, gets a handful of mitsuba at the very end. The lid goes on for twenty seconds before the heat goes off; any longer and the herb's parsley-like scent is gone.

Prep 12min Cook 15min 2 servings

Desserts Easy

Shusse Imo Sweet Potato Wrapped in Red Bean Paste

Steamed sweet potato, trimmed into a neat cylinder and wrapped in smooth red bean paste, slices into rounds with a golden center ringed by dark paste. The playful name means a potato that rose in the world, a joke about Tokushima sweet potatoes once being shipped through Osaka under the name of a larger growing area.

Prep 20min Cook 35min 4 servings

Soups Medium

Nuppei-jiru or Hachihai-jiru (Tofu Soup with Grated Yam)

Hot soy-seasoned broth with matchstick tofu goes into each bowl, then gets a ladle of raw grated nagaimo yam loosened with daikon juice, which spreads softly over the surface. This is the formal nuppei style from Iwate's Buddhist cooking, rather than the hachihai variation that thickens the whole pot with potato starch. The name hachihai is linked either to making eight bowls from one block of tofu or to wanting many refills. Gloves help when grating the nagaimo, which can irritate skin, and the topping goes on just before eating.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 35min Cook 20min 4 servings

Noodles Easy

Kimchi Butter Udon (Tangy Kimchi Stir-Fried in Butter)

With butter mellowing kimchi's sourness and adding a rich, nutty aroma, a splash of soy sauce is all the udon needs. The sharp tang softens once the kimchi, spread out in the pan, cooks down its juices until the edges darken. A soft-boiled egg on top breaks into a creamy sauce, with crumbled seaweed and chives for fragrance, and the whole dish comes together in about 12 minutes.

Prep 10min Cook 12min 2 servings

Asian Medium

Chicken Nanban

In Miyazaki, chicken breast fried in an egg coating is dipped into warm, sweet-sour nanban vinegar and then topped with cold tartar sauce. Unlike ordinary fried chicken, the coating ends up moist rather than crisp. The tartar sauce has chopped boiled egg, cucumber and onion in it, enough to give it some crunch.

Prep 20min Cook 20min 2 servings

Rice Medium

Octopus Nigiri Sushi

Cooked octopus is far springier than raw fish, and thick pieces fight the rice instead of sitting on it. Sliced thin and wide with the knife held almost flat, each piece drapes over the sides of the rice and bites through together with it.

Prep 25min Cook 10min 2 servings

Desserts Medium

Mushi Decchi Yokan (Bamboo-Wrapped Steamed Red Bean Yokan)

Bound with wheat flour instead of agar, this red bean paste comes out dense and chewy rather than smooth and jellied like neri yokan. In the Omi area of Shiga the batter is wrapped flat in bamboo sheaths and steamed; the sheath keeps it from drying and adds a light aroma. Only sheaths sold for food wrapping are used, washed and blanched, and they are peeled away before serving.

Prep 30min Cook 15min 4 servings

Soups Easy

Gyujiru Okinawan Beef Soup

Beef and carrot browned in lard give this clear Okinawan soup a quiet richness beneath its bonito broth. On the islands, winter versions used chidekuni, a long, bright yellow island carrot, and heartier pots added beef offal. It has also long been cooked for local observances. Here a single block of lean beef round keeps the prep simple.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 20min Cook 30min 4 servings

Noodles Medium

Korean Kimchi Soy Milk Tantan Noodles

This bowl follows the shape of Chinese dan dan noodles but swaps in Korean flavors: doenjang (fermented soybean paste) and soy sauce season the pork, and unsweetened soy milk forms the broth. Frying the chopped kimchi with the browned pork tames its sourness so it blends into the nutty chili-oil broth instead of standing apart. If the doenjang starts sticking to the pan, lower the heat right away to keep bitterness out.

Prep 18min Cook 15min 2 servings

Asian Medium

Chicken Tikka Masala

Chicken breast marinated in yogurt, curry powder, garlic and ginger gets seared over high heat until charred in spots, then simmered in a tomato and cream sauce. Usually described as an Indian-British fusion dish, it takes its depth from the charred chicken and from onions browned slowly in butter before the tomato goes in. Basmati rice or naan comes alongside, and tearing naan to wipe up the sauce is part of the meal.

Prep 30min Cook 40min 4 servings

Rice Easy

Nara Chameshi (Hojicha Rice with Soybeans)

Rice cooked in cooled hojicha instead of water takes on a quiet roasted aroma, and dry-roasted soybeans add a nutty bite. Its early form is said to be the rice served with tea porridge to monks taking part in Omizutori at Todaiji. Travelers later carried it to Edo, where shops near Sensoji made it widely known. The beans and salt are scattered over the soaked rice and left unstirred while it cooks.

Prep 50min Cook 50min 4 servings

Desserts Medium

Komugi Manju (Steamed Wheat Buns with Red Bean Paste)

Baking soda puffs the white, tender skin of these Utsunomiya buns, which is why they also go by tansan manju. Wheat thrived in Tochigi's double-cropping fields, and households steamed them with the new flour for Obon, weddings, funerals, and other yearly observances. On Kamafuta Tsuitachi, the first day of the seventh lunar month, families offered them so ancestors traveling home from the other world would not go hungry.

Prep 30min Cook 12min 10 servings

Soups Medium

Sanpei Jiru (Hokkaido Salted Salmon Soup)

A salted salmon head and backbone with some flesh still attached give the kombu stock its fish oil and savor. Sanpei jiru is a Hokkaido winter soup, and unlike Ishikari nabe, which is seasoned with miso and uses fresh salmon, it relies on the salt already cured into the fish.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 25min Cook 30min 4 servings

Noodles Easy

Kimchi Bean Sprout Miso Ramen

Sour kimchi, first fried in sesame oil, flavors the chicken stock, and miso with soy sauce lays a savory, salty layer on top. Frying the kimchi softens its sharp tang so it sits comfortably beside the miso.

Prep 10min Cook 18min 2 servings

Asian Easy

Chikko Dofu (Chiba Milk Tofu)

Warm milk and grain vinegar, nothing else, make this curd from the Awa and Kamogawa area of Chiba Prefecture. Despite the tofu name, no soybeans are involved; the texture is closer to a soft fresh cheese. Locally it was once made from colostrum, the first milk after a cow calves, while this recipe uses ordinary pasteurized whole milk. Chilled, it tastes mild with a faint tang.

Prep 10min Cook 20min 4 servings

Rice Hard

Nezushi (Koji-Fermented Trout and Rice)

Rice koji and cooked rice slowly develop a mild sweet-sour character in the cold, and that flavor seasons pieces of salted trout, shredded daikon, and carrot. This fermented New Year sushi comes from the Hida and Chuno areas of Gifu, especially around Gero, where it was traditionally started in December. The packed container rests for 14 to 20 days somewhere consistently cold, and the pace changes with the weather and the ingredients.

Prep 35min Cook 25min 4 servings