Asian Recipes

Prep 10min Cook 20min 2 servings

Shoyu Butter Corn Ramen

Butter melts slowly into a clear chicken and soy broth, leaving a rich, toasty aroma floating on top. Sweet corn and crunchy bean sprouts keep the salty broth from feeling heavy. The noodles boil in their own pot so their starch never clouds the soup, and the broth itself stays at a gentle simmer because hard boiling reduces it and pushes the salt up.

Prep 20min Cook 20min 3 servings

Guo Bao Rou (Sweet and Sour Crispy Pork)

Thin slices of pork loin get a thick potato-starch coat and two rounds of frying, which puff the crust into a hard, glassy shell that cracks when you bite. The sauce is just vinegar, sugar, and soy, so it is paler and sharper than the ketchup-red versions common in Korean Chinese restaurants. That tangier style traces back to late-Qing Harbin, where the dish was created to suit Russian guests.

Rice Hard

Zongzi (Chinese Bamboo-Wrapped Sticky Rice Dumplings)

Two bamboo leaves are folded into a cone, filled with glutinous rice, pork belly marinated in soy and oyster sauce, and shiitake, then tied into a triangle and simmered for over two hours. In that time the rice soaks up the pork fat and soy and packs into one dense, sticky mass.

Prep 60min Cook 120min 4 servings

Prep 20min Cook 60min 2 servings

Tokyo-Style Shoyu Ramen (Classic Japanese Soy Sauce Chicken Broth Ramen)

Bonito flakes steeped off the heat in a chicken and kombu stock add a layer of smoky fish aroma on top of the chicken. For a clear stock, the bones are blanched and scrubbed first, and the pot is kept below a hard boil with frequent skimming. Seasoning comes from a tare of soy sauce and mirin warmed only until it bubbles at the edges, spooned into each bowl before the hot stock is poured in. Narutomaki with its pink swirl, menma, and a soft-boiled egg sit over noodles cooked slightly under the package time so they hold their firmness in the soup.

Prep 40min Cook 15min 4 servings

Gyoza

Browning gyoza on one flat side only and then steaming them under a lid leaves the pleats soft and tender while the bottom turns golden and crisp. Japanese families brought the idea home from Manchuria after the war, recreating the jiaozi they had eaten there.

Rice Easy

Japanese Rice Soup Porridge

In Japan, zosui is what happens to the broth left at the end of a hot pot, with rice simmered in it. Here it is made from scratch with dashi. Rinsing the rice once keeps the broth clear, and it is much looser than Korean juk, eaten as rice and broth together.

Prep 10min Cook 15min 2 servings

Prep 15min Cook 12min 2 servings

Singapore Rice Noodles (Curry-Spiced Stir-Fried Vermicelli with Shrimp)

Thin rice vermicelli turns yellow with curry powder and tosses with shrimp, bell pepper and bean sprouts into a light, loose stir-fry. With only 1 tablespoon of soy sauce in the pan, curry aroma rather than salt carries the flavor.

Prep 15min Cook 25min 4 servings

Hansuke-dofu (Tofu Simmered with Grilled Eel Heads)

In Osaka, the grilled heads left over after eel is made into kabayaki are called hansuke. Rinsed with boiling water to take off excess glaze and fat, they go into a broth of dashi, soy sauce, sugar and sake with grilled tofu, and the deep eel flavor passes through the broth into the tofu. It comes from a merchant city that wasted nothing, not even cheap by-products. The heads are full of small bones and are all lifted out; only tofu, scallion and strained broth go into the bowl.

Prep 12min Cook 8min 2 servings

Soba Sesame Salad (Chilled Buckwheat Noodle Sesame Dressing)

Cold soba, rinsed until the strands feel clean, gets a light coat of soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Cutting cucumber, carrot, and red cabbage as thin as the noodles lets each mouthful pick up vegetables and buckwheat together instead of leaving the cabbage in a heap at the bottom of the bowl. The salad tastes best the moment it is tossed; left sitting in the dressing, the noodles go soft and the flavor turns watery.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes

Asian Hard

Cantonese Har Gow Dumplings

Wheat starch and tapioca starch mixed with boiling water make a wrapper that steams to a pearly translucence, with the pink shrimp showing through. It stretches and chews more than a flour wrapper. The filling is coarsely chopped shrimp with a little diced bamboo shoot, seasoned with nothing beyond salt, white pepper and sesame oil. At a Cantonese yum cha table, har gow is the dumpling the others are measured against.

Prep 35min Cook 12min 4 servings

Prep 20min Cook 40min 4 servings

Soto Ayam (Indonesian Golden Turmeric Chicken Noodle Soup)

Turmeric turns the broth a bright gold, and galangal and lemongrass give the chicken stock a warm, citrusy perfume. Unlike a plain chicken noodle soup, the aromatics are ground into a paste and fried in oil before the chicken and water go in, which gives this Indonesian soup its earthy depth. Rice noodles, boiled eggs, and mung bean sprouts sit in the bowl first, and the hot broth poured over them warms everything through. A squeeze of lime at the table cuts through the turmeric.

Asian Hard

Kaga Lotus Root Hasumushi

Kaga lotus root turns so sticky when grated that it is nicknamed mochi-renkon. In Kanazawa the grated root is spread over white fish, shrimp, ginkgo nuts and lily bulb, steamed, and served to guests under a clear, lightly thickened dashi, eaten with a spoon so the chewy layer and the broth come up together.

🎉 For Guests

Prep 35min Cook 25min 4 servings

Prep 20min Cook 30min 10 servings

Tara no Ko Iri (Akita Cod Roe with Shirataki)

Raw Pacific cod roe gets squeezed straight from the sac into simmering soy sauce, sake, and mirin, then cooked down with shirataki until each grain clings to the noodles. This Akita preparation uses true cod roe, not the pollock roe sold as tarako or mentaiko.

Prep 25min Cook 15min 4 servings

Hatto (Buckwheat Rice-Flour Diamonds with Perilla Miso)

Diamonds of buckwheat and rice flour dough, boiled and coated in junen miso: toasted perilla seeds ground with sugar and miso. Hatto belongs to Hinoemata, where it marked the end of rice planting or roof work. One story links the name to gohatto, an Edo-period ban on eating too much grain, with villagers making the food in secret; another says a lord liked it so much that commoners were allowed it only at celebrations.

Prep 15min Cook 20min 2 servings

Suanlafen (Sichuan Hot-and-Sour Sweet Potato Noodle Soup)

Black vinegar and chili oil hit at the same time, sour and hot, over a chicken stock with slippery, springy sweet potato starch noodles. Both are added to the bowl rather than the pot, leaving each person free to tune the sourness. The noodles turn clear before they are fully done; the real signal is when the firm center disappears but the bounce remains.

Asian Hard

Haze Tsukudani (Tamari-Simmered Sea Goby)

Two rounds of refrigerator drying, one before an unseasoned grilling and one after, firm small sea gobies enough to keep their shape through a long final simmer in sweet tamari broth. Grilling also cuts surface moisture and fishy aroma. The result, a preserved side from the Mikawa Bay coast of Aichi, is nearly dry, concentrated in soybean savor and sweetness, and eaten a little at a time with rice or drinks.

Prep 30min Cook 55min 4 servings

Prep 15min Cook 12min 2 servings

Suttate (Chilled Sesame Miso Udon)

Toasted sesame, rice miso, shiso, onion, and cucumber are ground together in a mortar, then thinned with cold bonito stock into a dipping soup for chilled udon. It is a summer dish from Kawajima in Saitama, nutty from the sesame and cool from the shiso and cucumber. Bruising the sliced cucumber with the pestle lets its juice and aroma run into the base. The sesame is ground fine enough for its oil to seep out, which is where the nutty richness comes from. The cold stock is poured in gradually so the thick sesame-miso paste loosens without lumps.

Asian Easy

Heshiko Rice-Bran Fermented Mackerel

Gutted mackerel salted for about ten days and then buried in rice bran with chile, sake, and fresh sansho for roughly half a year becomes heshiko, a preserve from Kyoto's Tango region. The fish is salty and strongly fermented, so it is brushed of excess bran, grilled briefly, and eaten in small amounts with rice, ochazuke, or drinks. The name may come from heshikomu, a fisherman's word for pressing fish into a barrel. This recipe skips home fermentation and covers only a sealed, fully matured product from a licensed maker.

🍺 Bar Snacks

Prep 15min Cook 10min 4 servings

Noodles Hard

Rokubei (Extruded Sweet Potato Noodles)

Dough made from sendango, a fermented sweet potato preserve, is pressed through a dedicated extruder called a rokubei-segi so short, thick noodles drop straight into boiling water. The dish has been made in Shimabara and Tsushima in Nagasaki since the Edo period. The noodles are smooth outside, chewy inside, and faintly sweet from the potato. Once cooked, they are moved straight to cold water and rinsed to wash off the harsh surface. They are served in a clear broth of burdock, carrot, and shiitake seasoned with two soy sauces and sake, topped with fish cake and scallion.

Prep 35min Cook 30min 5 servings