Japanese Recipes

509 Japanese recipes. Page 3 of 22. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Akashiyaki (Soft Egg-Dashi Octopus Dumplings), Japanese Cotton Cheesecake, Butadon.

Asian Medium

Akashiyaki (Soft Egg-Dashi Octopus Dumplings)

Soft rounds of egg-rich batter, each holding a piece of boiled octopus, are dipped into clear dashi, warm or cold, in this specialty of Akashi in Hyogo. The batter uses refined wheat starch alongside flour, and because that starch stays tender when heated and the batter is heavy with egg and dashi, the result is far softer and moister than takoyaki. Locals long called it tamagoyaki. One story traces it to egg yolks left over from making Akashi-dama, imitation coral ornaments that used the whites, cooked with octopus caught just offshore.

Prep 20min Cook 25min 4 servings

Baking Medium

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake

Folded meringue lifts the batter, and a slow bake at 150°C in a hot water bath lets it cook gently. The cake dissolves almost weightlessly on the tongue. A slight sink after it leaves the oven is normal, and an overnight rest in the fridge spreads the moisture evenly for a silkier slice.

Prep 35min Cook 55min 6 servings

Rice Easy

Butadon

Thin slices of pork shoulder and onion cook in a gingery soy sauce and go over rice. The pan comes off the heat while a little sauce still pools at the bottom, and that sauce is spooned over the rice.

Prep 15min Cook 15min 2 servings

Stir-fry Medium

Goya Champuru (Bitter Melon and Island Tofu Stir-Fry)

No champuru goes without firm Okinawan island tofu. Here it is torn into large pieces and browned first; thin slices of goya get a short stir-fry and a coating of egg, and then boiled pork belly and the tofu go back in. It started as summer home cooking and is now on Okinawan tables all year.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 20min Cook 40min 4 servings

Desserts Medium

Botamochi (Rice Cakes Coated with Red Bean Paste)

Regular rice outnumbers glutinous rice two to one here, and the cooked rice is pounded only halfway, so whole grains still show under the bean paste that wraps each piece completely. The paste is cooked in the pot from unsweetened raw bean paste, sugar and water. Half-pounded rice is very sticky, so cut it small for children and older adults.

Prep 30min Cook 45min 30 servings

Grilled Medium

Aji no Sanbai (Grilled Horse Mackerel in Sanbaizu)

Small horse mackerel go straight from the grill into sanbaizu, a sweet-sour mix of vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and dashi, and the seasoning soaks in while the fish is still hot. The dish comes from Kagawa on the Seto Inland Sea, where people who helped haul beach seine nets were once given small mackerel to take home. Its clean acidity suited hot days, and it turned up at summer festivals alongside drinks. Because the fish are grilled whole, the thickest part of the body has to be fully cooked. For children and older eaters, pick the flesh off the bones, which the vinegar does not always soften, and keep the fish refrigerated despite the acid.

🍺 Bar Snacks

Prep 80min Cook 20min 4 servings

Soups Medium

Chanko Nabe (Sumo-Style Hot Pot)

Sumo wrestlers ate this hot pot together in their stables, which explains how much goes into a single pot: chicken thigh, chicken meatballs, napa cabbage, mizuna, shiitake, soft tofu, fried tofu and kuzukiri noodles. The broth is chicken stock with grated garlic and ginger, and people help themselves to whatever is done while the rest keeps simmering.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 25min Cook 30min 4 servings

Pancakes Easy

Monjayaki

Monjayaki never sets into a pancake. A very loose flour-and-dashi batter cooks down with finely cut cabbage on a hot griddle, and diners scrape it up a bite at a time from the edge with small spatulas, pressing each bite briefly onto the hot griddle to crisp it. Most closely tied to Tsukishima in Tokyo, it is about eating the crisp, browned base and the soft center together. Dried squid, dried shrimp, and tenkasu add savory crunch to the Worcestershire-seasoned liquid.

Prep 15min Cook 15min 3 servings

Kimchi Medium

Yukina Fusube-zuke

Snow-grown yukina dipped into boiling water three times, for only three seconds each, develops a sharp, mustard-like pungency that the slightly bitter raw greens lack. Fusuberu is a local word in Okitama, Yamagata, for a brief scald. Lord Uesugi Yozan is said to have encouraged the crop so the snowy region would have winter greens, and under the snow the bundled plants feed on their own leaves to grow pale flower stalks. It is a short pickle: three days pressed and chilled, then eaten within a week while the aroma lasts.

Prep 35min Cook 5min 4 servings

Noodles Easy

Cold Buckwheat Noodles

Mori soba keeps the buckwheat front and center: cold noodles on a plate, a separate cup of chilled tsuyu, and just the tips dipped before each bite. Rubbing the noodles under running water until it runs clear strips the surface starch and gives them a smooth, slippery finish. The ice-water dip that follows stays short, since soaking too long washes out the buckwheat flavor. With only wasabi, scallion, and nori as garnish, a dipping sauce diluted too far leaves the whole plate tasting flat.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes

Prep 10min Cook 10min 2 servings

Salads Medium

Grapefruit Shiso Shrimp Salad

Grapefruit segments and a yuja marmalade dressing layer two kinds of citrus, one juicy and tart, the other floral. Thin ribbons of shiso, with their minty, herbal edge, tidy up any fishiness from the shrimp, while cucumber and radish supply crunch. Served cold, every element tastes sharper.

🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 20min Cook 5min 2 servings

Asian Hard

Amago Trout Kanroni

Grilled amago simmers slowly in hojicha, soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar until even its fine bones turn soft. The fish is a red-spotted trout of the salmon family, and this way of cooking it comes from the Yoshino and Uda areas of Nara. Raw freshwater fish can carry parasites and contaminants. Only dressed, farmed, cooking-grade amago from a licensed supplier is used here, never fish you caught yourself.

Prep 30min Cook 150min 4 servings

Baking Medium

Matcha Roll Cake (Green Tea Chiffon Sponge with Cream)

The sheet is a chiffon batter with meringue folded in, light and springy, and the bitterness of matcha lingers after the sweetness of the cream has gone. How green it turns out depends on how briefly you fold once the flour and matcha go in.

Prep 25min Cook 15min 8 servings

Rice Easy

Cabbage Mochi (Soy-Braised Cabbage with Rice Cakes)

Soft rice cakes are folded through cabbage that has simmered in sake, mirin, soy sauce, and kombu noodle sauce until the ribs turn tender, leaving a salty, lightly sweet glaze on every piece. The dish belongs to the Ose district of Koriyama in Fukushima, where farm households grew their own rice and cabbage and made it year-round as a meal or a filling snack.

Prep 10min Cook 15min 2 servings

Stir-fry Easy

Keichan (Miso Chicken and Cabbage Stir-Fry)

Garlic and mixed miso are rubbed into the chicken breast, cut across the grain into 2 cm pieces, and it rests in the fridge for 15 minutes before cooking. Carrot goes in first because it needs longer, then cabbage and green pepper, and the pan comes off the heat once the cabbage edges turn translucent and have picked up the miso left in the pan.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 20min Cook 15min 4 servings

Desserts Easy

Fukuregashi Brown Sugar Steamed Cake

Baking soda and vinegar react in the batter and push this thick brown sugar cake high in its cloth-lined colander. In Kagoshima it is also called soda-gashi or fukurakan for that soda rise. It grew out of the Satsuma domain's Edo-period control of sugarcane and brown sugar, and was once eaten at harvest festivals and as a snack during farm work. Warm from the steamer it is fluffy; once cool it turns chewy.

Prep 20min Cook 40min 8 servings

Grilled Hard

Amego Hirara-yaki (Miso Trout Hot-Plate Grill)

In the Iya area of Tokushima, river trout, tofu, konjac and vegetables were traditionally cooked over a layer of sweet miso on a heated flat stone called a hirara. Here a lidded electric griddle stands in for the stone, and chicken thigh, potatoes and shiitake join the trout, enough for four on one plate.

Prep 30min Cook 35min 4 servings

Soups Medium

Chimushinji (Okinawan Pork Liver Broth)

In Okinawa this miso soup with pork liver is made on days when someone is worn out or under the weather. Chimu means pork liver and shinji a decocted broth; dishes like this are called kusuimun, though it is home food, not medicine.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 30min Cook 35min 4 servings

Pancakes Hard

Nikuten (Layered Beef Tendon and Potato Pancake)

In Takasago, Hyogo, nikuten gets built in layers instead of mixed like okonomiyaki: potato, konjac, cabbage, scallion, beef tendon, and tempura crumbs stack on a thin round of batter, which folds in half after saucing. Because nothing is stirred together, the floury potato, soft tendon, and crisp crumbs each keep their own texture. The potato and konjac simmer with the tendon in soy sauce, sugar, and mirin, so all three share the same sweet-salty seasoning.

Prep 30min Cook 135min 4 servings

Kimchi Hard

Iburigakko (Smoked Daikon Pickle)

The daikon hangs in hardwood smoke for days until the skin turns an even amber and the radish is dry enough to bend, and only then does it go into the rice bran bed. That smoking needs a dedicated outdoor smokehouse with fire control, never a home oven or an enclosed room, because of fire and carbon monoxide risk. Bran, steamed broken rice, salt, coarse sugar and a little turmeric must fill every gap between the radishes and cover the top, since the pickle then sits through winter for 50 to 60 days. Any mold, off smell or unusual stickiness rules it out for eating.

Prep 60min 0 48 servings

Noodles Hard

Dojo-jiru Loach and Udon Soup

In Kagawa, fresh udon goes straight into the loach and miso soup, so it eats as both soup and a bowl of noodles, with burdock, eggplant, taro and fried tofu in the pot too. The loach is never self-caught: only farmed fish that a licensed supplier has professionally purged.

Prep 60min Cook 55min 20 servings

Salads Medium

Hitomoji no Guruguru (Coiled Scallions with Vinegar Miso)

Blanched wakegi scallions are folded at the white base to form a core, then the green leaves are wound tightly around it into bite-size coils. The thick white base goes into the pot ahead of the faster-cooking thin leaves, and that head start keeps the leaves from going limp. Twisting tears the blanched stalks; they are pressed dry from base to tip instead, because leftover water makes the leaves slip, the coils unwind and the dip turn thin. No toothpick holds them; a little sticky sap from the pinched leaf tip glues the end in place. They are served lined up beside a sweet-tart dip of white miso, sugar, vinegar and mirin.

🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 20min Cook 5min 4 servings

Asian Medium

Anko no Tomo-ae (Monkfish with Liver Miso)

Monkfish liver, cooked in a dry pan and mashed with miso and sugar, becomes a thick dressing for the boiled flesh in this winter side dish from Soma in Fukushima. Rehydrated dried daikon and salted wakame go into the toss as well. The boiled fish cools as it is rather than in cold water, which would wash out its flavor and thin the liver dressing.

Prep 25min Cook 20min 4 servings

Baking Hard

Malcha Chamkkae Brioche Knots (Matcha Sesame Brioche Knots)

Two ropes of brioche, one plain and one tinted with matcha, are twisted and tied into knots, so each piece pulls apart in alternating white and green. Toasted sesame seeds pressed on before the surface dries get toasted a second time in the oven.

Prep 40min Cook 18min 4 servings