236 recipes. Page 1 of 10
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A whole slab of atsuage, thick deep-fried tofu, is simmered uncut in this Fukui side dish, and a cross cut on top lets the broth seep in while the center stays white and plain. Each bite has a seasoned outside and a mild middle. Pouring boiling water over the tofu first rinses off surface oil and keeps the broth clean.
Piped into a doughnut pan and baked rather than fried, these come out soft all the way through, closer to a small cake. The batter has yogurt, milk and yuja-cheong, Korean citron preserve, and the minced ginger is stirred into the yuja-cheong first so it does not end up in one clump. Overbaked, they turn dry, and checking starts at 12 minutes.
Pollock innards are salted for 30 minutes, then mixed with gochugaru, garlic, ginger and fish sauce and left in the fridge for at least three days to become jeotgal, a Korean salted relish. Most of the work is in the first wash: the innards are rubbed in cold water again and again until the rinse water runs clearer and the surface is less slick.
A modest scoop of rice gets its toppings arranged to taste: shredded chicken, thin egg strips, simmered shiitake, green beans, miso-pickled papaya, scallion, citrus peel, and nori. Hot chicken-bone broth is then poured over generously, and the bowl is eaten lightly, almost like soup. On Amami, the earliest form resembled seasoned chicken rice, and the custom of pouring broth over it spread in the Showa era and became standard. The bones simmer with ginger for an hour, and the tenderloin is poached in that same broth, which ties the meat and the soup together.
Celery leaves usually end up in the bin, but here they go into the pan with the stalks and give the chicken breast an herby smell. The stalks get only a short time on the heat, so they still crunch.
Pork large intestine is stuffed with glutinous rice, pork blood, blanched mung bean sprouts and napa cabbage, and doenjang, then steamed into a thick sundae that cuts into broad, heavy slices. The casing is filled only about 80 percent to leave room for the rice to swell, and the cooked sundae cools completely before slicing, or the filling squeezes out.
Bite through the chewy rice skin and the sesame filling, softened with butter and sugar, runs out warm and nutty. The broth is not a sugar syrup: the dumpling cooking water is simmered with sliced ginger, so its mild heat cuts through the rich, sweet center.
Chunks of Asian pear simmer for a long time over low heat with bellflower root (doraji), ginger and jujubes, and the pear juice sweetens the tea with no sugar. The fresh doraji is peeled, then rubbed hard with salt and rinsed two or three times, which keeps a medicinal smell out of the tea. It is a warm drink for the season when the wind turns cold and the air dry, and leftovers can be chilled and poured over ice.
Kecap manis, Indonesia's sweet soy sauce, turns into dark glossy patches and light char once the chicken thighs meet high grill heat. Because the chicken first cooks gently in its marinade, the grill only has to color the surface, and the sugary sauce spends little time over the flame.
A young chicken is simmered whole on the bone, lifted out, and its meat pulled apart and served under the clear broth. Only whole garlic, jujubes, green onion and ginger go into the pot, so the seasoning is just salt and pepper at the end.
The flower crab is not picked; it is halved shell and all, floured, dipped in egg and fried, and you end up eating it the way you would any crab, holding the shell and pulling the meat out. Before frying, minced ginger is rubbed into the gaps between meat and shell and left for a short while to tame the fishy smell and season the thick meat inside.
The pork back ribs simmer on their own for 25 minutes, until the meat pulls easily off the bone, before the potatoes and seasoning go in. The perilla leaves are laid on top in large pieces at the very end; cooked too long, they turn astringent instead of fragrant.
Doenjang and a pinch of instant coffee in the boiling water soften the porky smell without seasoning the meat itself. Five minutes in the broth after the heat goes off keeps the slices moist, and kimchi and fresh wrap leaves supply the seasoning at the table.
Thin slices of cucumber, eggplant, lotus root and carrot share the bowl with chewy wood ear mushroom, shiso and ginger, and each bite lands somewhere different on the crunch scale. Each vegetable is prepped on its own terms: the hard lotus root and carrot get a short blanch, while the softer cucumber and eggplant are rubbed with salt instead. The sweet vinegar with sliced red chili is boiled once and then cooled all the way down. Poured on while still warm, it costs the cucumber and lotus root their snap. Squeezing the salted cucumber and eggplant hard after rinsing keeps the dressing from going watery. Half an hour in the fridge is enough before serving it cold with its liquid.
Tamarind gives this fish broth its sour backbone, with flaked mackerel and rice noodles underneath and cucumber and mint on top. A finely blended paste of onion, garlic, and ginger forms the base and carries the chili heat. The mackerel is cooked and boned before it goes into the soup, so the bowl is easy to eat. Cucumber and mint add a cool, fresh finish to the hot, sour broth.
Raw salmon and white fish go into a cold leche de tigre together with shrimp and squid that were fully cooked and chilled separately. Only fish sold for raw consumption with documented parasite-control freezing belongs in it, and it should not be served to pregnant people, children, older adults or anyone with weakened immunity.
Instead of flour or batter, the coating here is coconut milk and a turmeric, garlic, and ginger paste simmered down until it clings to the chicken. Fried afterward, that layer turns deep gold with rough, crunchy nubs rather than a smooth shell.
Soy sauce does not cook the crab in ganjang gejang, which is why only crab sold for raw consumption belongs in this Korean soy-marinated dish. The brine, simmered with apple, ginger, whole garlic, and scallion, has to be chilled to 4°C or below all the way through before it is poured over the crabs; warm liquid changes the texture of the raw meat.
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.
Think of it as a close cousin of teriyaki: the same sticky sweet-salty shine, but with garlic and ginger fried in the oil first so their sharpness comes through more directly. Patting the boneless thighs dry matters, since a wet surface colors slowly even over high heat.
Inside the pork casing, soaked glutinous rice swells as it steams and binds the glass noodles and pork blood into a dense, sticky filling. That swelling is why the casing is filled only about 80% of the way and why any puffed spots get a quick needle prick during steaming.
Douhua is traditionally set with a coagulant such as gypsum, but this home version uses gelatin to set the soy milk into a pudding. It wobbles on the spoon, and goes under a cooled syrup of brown sugar simmered with ginger.
This is not a copy of Kooksoondang's Baekseju but a homemade rice wine of glutinous rice and Korean nuruk with fresh ginseng, jujubes and ginger. Whether fermentation is done is judged less by the day count than by the bubbling dropping off noticeably and the liquid separating into layers. Live yeast remains even in the strained wine and would ferment honey stirred into it, so honey goes only into each glass at serving.
Charring whole eggplant over an open flame until the skin turns completely black is what puts the smoke into this Punjabi mash. The flesh is mashed only roughly with a fork, so small pieces stay visible instead of becoming a smooth puree. Watery bharta usually comes from tomato that was not cooked down; the onion and tomato base should already be a dense paste before the eggplant is added.