509 Japanese recipes. Page 2 of 22. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Azuki Batto (Wide Noodles in Sweet Red Bean Soup).
Wide, hand-cut wheat noodles simmer briefly in a warm, sweet red bean soup, making a dessert that eats like a bowl of noodles. Coarse zarame sugar gives the beans a clean, pronounced sweetness, with a pinch of salt to round it out. Floating is not proof the noodles are done; the thickest strand gets split open to look for raw flour.
Fried thick tofu (atsuage) and toasted white sesame are ground together into a thick dressing that clings to shredded daikon and carrot. The grinding goes on until no flecks of the tofu skin remain, which is what makes the coating smooth enough to wrap the fine shreds. It resembles shiraae, the Japanese tofu-dressed salad, in its nutty richness, but vinegar and Japanese mustard make it tart with a little nasal heat. Wringing the salted daikon and carrot out firmly in two or three goes keeps the coating thick after the vinegar is added and lets the vegetables keep their crunch. Thin diagonal slices of blanched snow peas add green against the white and orange.
In the Noto area of Ishikawa, this root vegetable side dish is made for New Year and other special occasions. Flattened soybeans, burdock, and fried tofu simmer in sweetened soy, while daikon and carrot strips are blanched separately and folded in afterward, and each keeps its own texture. Vinegar layered over the soy seasoning puts it somewhere between a simmered dish and a dressed salad.
Instead of grinding the leaves into the batter, this roll steeps Earl Grey in warm milk and strains it. The sponge carries bergamot aroma without visible tea specks. The chiffon sheet gets its lift from a folded meringue and stays soft enough to roll. Rolling it once while still warm, paper and all, sets the curve so it is less likely to crack when filled later. The whipped cream is only lightly sweetened, leaving the tea as the main flavor.
Rousui comes from the Katsuura area of Tokushima, and the word is said to be a local form of zosui, Japanese rice porridge. Whole sweetfish are laid over rice, potato and eggplant as they simmer, and their aroma goes into the broth. Once cooked, the fish move to a plate to be picked clean of even the fine bones before the flesh returns to the pot. Broken up in the pot, those bones would be hard to find.
Pasteurized, food-grade pig blood mixed with red miso cooks down into fine brown crumbs once the red liquid disappears. Those crumbs cling to strands of dried daikon, which are braised with seasoned pork belly, kamaboko and pork stock until most of the liquid is gone. Hihatsu, an Okinawan long pepper, and a little salt go in at the end.
Cubes of agar jelly that snap cleanly under a knife sit among fruit, chewy mochi, and red bean paste, and brown sugar syrup poured just before eating ties them together. Anmitsu grew out of mitsumame, agar with boiled beans, when red bean paste was added in the Meiji era.
In Hagi, Yamaguchi, the skin of eso (lizardfish) left over from making grilled fish cakes was saved rather than thrown away, marinated in sweet soy and wrapped around burdock root. The rolls appeared at festivals, for guests and in cherry-blossom picnic boxes, and what sets them apart is that they use the skin, not a paste of the flesh. The skin needs a night in the marinade, which means starting the day before. Sliced, each round shows burdock at the center ringed by layers of dark, glazed skin.
Buckwheat dough rolled between the palms into thin strands shaped like little loach fish cooks gently in a dashi full of vegetables. Bound with egg and hot water, the dough should be as soft as an earlobe without sticking badly to the hands. Burdock, carrot, kabocha, napa cabbage, shiitake and chikuwa fish cake share the pot, which holds far more than a plain flour-dumpling soup.
In Gyoda, Saitama, okara and skin-steamed potato are kneaded with carrot, onion, flour and egg, shaped into flat oval coins and fried with no breadcrumb coating. The jelly in the name has nothing to do with dessert; it is thought to have drifted from zeni fry, or coin fry, after the koban-like shape. A Gyoda teahouse owner who served in the Russo-Japanese War is said to have adapted it from a vegetable bun of northeastern China, and it was common by the late Meiji period. The hot fritters get a brief dip in a six-to-four blend of Worcestershire and chuno sauces.
Blanched cabbage is layered with cooked salted trout, carrot, ginger and chili, and each layer gets a splash of amazake and vinegar. In inland Tsugaru, Aomori, fresh seafood was once hard to come by, and through about four months of heavy snow, pickled vegetables and long-keeping salted trout carried households through winter. Families ate the grilled flesh and put the remaining edible parts into pickles or shirani soup. The batch fills an 18L container and stays at 4°C or below from start to finish, so refrigerator space is the first thing to sort out.
Five minutes in soy-and-mirin-seasoned bonito dashi is enough for shiitake and oyster mushrooms to spread their savory, woodsy flavor through the whole broth. Tearing the oyster mushrooms along the grain, instead of slicing them, lets them soak up more liquid. The soba cooks in a separate pot and gets rinsed in cold water, washing off surface starch that would cloud the broth and leave the noodles limp. A pinch of grated yuzu zest at the end floats a sharp citrus note over the earthy broth so the bowl finishes light, and sliced chives add color.
Plump, springy edamame and soft, creamy avocado make the main contrast in the bowl. A dressing of soy sauce, lime juice and sesame oil gives it a light, salty-tart Asian profile, and cucumber and cherry tomatoes add crunch and juice. The only cooking is a few minutes of blanching the beans. Cool them completely before mixing; warm beans turn the avocado mushy. The avocado gets a little lime juice the moment it is cut to slow browning, and the finished salad has a better texture served cold.
Sarubogai, the small ark clams that Izumo in Shimane calls akagai, are steamed briefly in their shells with dashi, mirin, and light soy sauce for the New Year table. They are a separate, smaller species from the ark shell usually sold as akagai, with fewer ribs on the shell, and were once a signature of the brackish Nakaumi lagoon. Short cooking keeps the meat sweet and moist. Any clam that never opens is discarded, and the cloudy cooking liquid stays in the pot.
Kokuto, the Japanese unrefined cane sugar, goes into both the dough and the syrup, and ordinary light brown sugar will not give the same flavor. The baked slab is cut into triangles and dipped in warm syrup, and what clings to the surface slowly works its way into the cut edges. Unlike an iced biscuit, this Kagoshima sweet keeps its coating damp rather than drying it into a shell. The slab rises with baking soda, not baking powder.
From the mountainous Iya area of Tokushima, this zosui uses buckwheat neither as flour nor as noodles but as hulled whole groats, called sobagome. Local tradition ties it to the Heike, who are said to have planted fast-growing buckwheat on land where rice would not grow well. Chicken, chikuwa, konjac and carrot share the broth with the grains.
Ketchup, chili sauce and a splash of vinegar make a sauce that leans sweet and tangy rather than hot. Shallow-frying the shrimp in a starch coat, rather than deep-frying them, leaves a coating that turns silky in the sauce while the meat stays springy.
The name comes from yude manju, boiled manju, as it was said in Saitama. True to it, the bean-filled buns cook in boiling water instead of a steamer, then get a cold rinse once they float and are fanned dry until they shine. They were made with the new wheat crop, offered at Bon and handed round to neighbors.
Taro, small potatoes, tofu, konjac and buckwheat dumplings share one skewer, so each bite changes texture. In this dish from Iya in Tokushima, every piece is steamed or boiled on its own first, then the skewers are browned, brushed with a sweet miso glaze and grilled until it bubbles and spots dark. Each skewer is finished with a sansho leaf.
There is no dough: buckwheat flour is scattered straight into simmering anchovy broth and cooks into small lumps that hold the liquid. Leftovers firm up as they cool, and cut small and browned in a dry pan they are good all over again.
In Gunma's wheat-loving farm villages, jiriyaki, a thick wheat pancake with green onion and sakura shrimp, was the snack eaten by hand at the work breaks at 10 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. It once cooked slowly over the ash heat of an irori hearth, and the name is said to echo the jiri-jiri sound of the batter sizzling.
Thick split-dried daikon softens slowly in a sweet soy-vinegar brine yet keeps a firm, crackling bite. In Miura, Kanagawa, families traditionally split winter daikon lengthwise into sixteen to twenty sections and sun-dried it for about two weeks, leaving pieces much chunkier than finely shredded dried radish. The radish is only rinsed twice in cold water to remove dust. Soaking it beforehand weakens the firm texture that should come back in the brine. Kombu and dried squid bring savory depth, and seeded dried chili adds heat to the whole jar. The centers are seasoned from day 4, and the jar is finished within 10 days.
Tsuyu sharpened with vinegar dresses this cold soba salad and finishes lighter than an oil-based dressing would. Purple shreds of red cabbage, cucumber and lettuce mix in among the brown buckwheat noodles, and nori flakes are scattered on top. Rubbing the noodles under cold water until the slick surface is gone keeps the strands separate and lets the dressing cling. A boiled egg or some chicken breast turns it into a full meal.
Coarse grating on a bamboo oni-oroshi or rough grater leaves the daikon in ragged, crunchy bits instead of a watery pulp. The salted daikon gets just one light squeeze, since grating it fine or wringing it hard would erase both that roughness and its juiciness. Small fish cured first in salt and then vinegar are folded through a sweet miso-vinegar dressing in this Ibaraki-style namasu. The fish should already be gutted and scaled, and it stays cold while curing and after the dish is finished. Served straight away it has the sharpest crunch, while 15 minutes in the fridge lets the miso and vinegar soak in more evenly.