877 recipes. Page 25 of 37
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Sliced into rounds after grilling, each piece of this stuffed squid shows rings in cross section: chewy squid outside, sticky glutinous rice, then soft tofu. Soaked rice swells as it cooks, so the tubes are filled only 70 to 80 percent. Packed full, they split on the grill.
Despite the name, gamja-jjim is not steamed: potato cubes simmer in soy sauce, sugar and garlic until almost no liquid is left and a glossy film coats each piece. Cubes cut to one size take the seasoning to the center at the same pace, and no piece ends up bland inside. Scallions and a little sesame oil finish it with a fresh, nutty note.
Despite the name, the noodles are thick wheat, not buckwheat, served in a clear bonito broth under pork belly braised sweet and salty in soy, mirin, and sugar. Because the pork carries so much seasoning, the broth gets only a light touch of soy so it stays clean. The cooked noodles get a brief rinse in warm water rather than cold, which removes surface starch without cooling them down, and bonito flakes on top add a smoky aroma.
Narazuke, Nara's vegetables pickled in sake lees, is chopped and folded into a sweet-soy simmer of fiddlehead fern (zenmai), kanpyo gourd strips, shiitake, konjac strips, carrot, and fried tofu. On its own the pickle is strong, but spread through so many soft vegetables its boozy aroma and firm crunch become a gentle accent. This everyday side dish from Nara is eaten fully cooled.
Garlic scapes, a spring vegetable, keep their sharp garlicky smell and firm snap even when stir-fried. Here they cook briefly over high heat with thin slices of pork shoulder in a gochujang sauce and go onto the rice while still crunchy, along with every bit of sauce scraped from the pan.
Bracken fern is first coated in perilla oil and then simmered briefly in soy-seasoned water, so it ends up tender and seasoned all the way through. That second stage is closer to braising than frying, and stopping while a little liquid remains keeps the ferns moist. Use bracken that has already been soaked and boiled; dried or raw fern should not go straight into this pan. Splitting the thick stems by hand evens out the seasoning.
Duck breast rubbed with rosemary, thyme, garlic and olive oil is pan-roasted, then glazed in its last minute with soy sauce and pear juice. After a five-minute rest it is sliced thin against the grain, showing pink meat under the herb-scented skin.
Instead of small whole potatoes, this version peels ordinary ones and cuts them into bite-size chunks. The corn syrup waits until the potatoes are nearly tender; added that late, it stays a thin shine instead of turning into a sticky syrup. Serve it warm or fully cooled.
In Gunma homes, wide unsalted noodles go straight into a pot of root vegetables and dashi without being boiled first. The broth comes out slightly cloudy and thick rather than clear, and that is how it should be. Taro, burdock, daikon, shiitake, and fried tofu make it a hearty one-pot meal seasoned with both soy sauce and miso. Noodle thickness and vegetables change from one household to another.
Vinegar is added only at the very end, so a sweet soy simmer of burdock, carrot, lotus root, shiitake, shirataki, and fried tofu picks up a bright sour note while the lotus root keeps some crunch. It comes from around Mito in Ibaraki, and one theory traces the name to nite aeru, to simmer and then dress. Families made big batches for New Year and ceremonies and ate it the next day, and it still tastes best after a night in the refrigerator.
Once the salt-blanched tofu is in the doubanjiang sauce, the spatula is put away and only the pan gets shaken, which keeps the cubes square all the way to the rice. A sprinkle of Sichuan pepper at the end pushes it toward a proper mala taste.
Only soy sauce, cooking wine and garlic season it, and lightly, so the sweetness of Korean zucchini (aehobak) and the shrimp come first. It holds up well at room temperature.
As sliced duck grills with onion, the fat that melts out mixes with the gochujang marinade and pools in the pan as a sweet, spicy sauce. Spooning it back over the meat while it cooks is what gives the surface its shine. Wrapped in perilla leaves, each bite is noticeably less fiery.
In the same soy broth, the potato soaks up seasoning to the center while the peeled quail eggs only brown on the outside. It has long been a familiar lunchbox side for Korean children, and it is seasoned without any heat.
Soaking water from dried shiitake, with no meat or bonito, forms the broth for this Japanese vegetable soup, and potato starch thickens it just enough to coat a spoon. In southern Miyagi it is a Buddhist meatless dish served around the spring and autumn equinoxes, at Obon, and at memorial gatherings. That light body holds taro, burdock, carrot, tofu, and fried tofu in suspension, letting each spoonful bring up both broth and filling. The umen noodles are boiled in a separate pot, since cooking them in the soup would release enough starch to cloud and weigh it down. Shiraishi umen, shirataki, and small wheat gluten puffs (mame-fu) make it something between a soup and a noodle dish, and a scattering of mitsuba adds a fresh herbal note at the end.
Thin slices of beef, potatoes, onion, carrot, and shirataki noodles simmer in dashi sweetened with mirin and sugar and seasoned with soy sauce, a combination many Japanese people tie to home cooking. One story traces it to a Meiji-era naval officer trying to recreate British beef stew with Japanese ingredients, which would explain why the result is a clear soy braise rather than a thick, flour-bound stew.
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.
Mussels steamed in butter and rice wine get green chili and scallion, so a sharp heat follows the richness of the butter. The liquor from the shells mixes with the melted butter, and there is no separate sauce to make.
Squid and pork belly share one gochujang marinade, but only the pork goes into the pan at first. After five or six minutes it has given up its fat and the sauce has turned glossy; the squid follows and cooks in three or four, soaking up pork-enriched sauce as it goes.
Skate flesh is threaded with soft cartilage, which gives it a pleasant chew. It braises in a gochugaru and soy liquid over heat low enough that the surface barely moves, almost steaming.
Wide rice noodles pressed against a hot wok for about 20 seconds pick up charred patches, and those toasty spots make pad see ew taste like more than soy-sauced noodles. Dark soy sauce does the coloring, turning the noodles deep brown alongside regular soy and oyster sauce, with a little sugar for sweetness. The wide strands tear easily, so they get lifted and turned in big motions rather than stirred. Kale provides the green, its stems going in ahead of the leaves.
The cabbage mixed into the ground pork gives off its water, keeping the filling juicy inside the fluffy steamed dough. The filling is seasoned with ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil, and a little sugar makes the dough faintly sweet.
Bulgogi-cut beef is seared in the pot just until it changes color, then the soaked rice and water go in on top and cook with it. Water parsley and the last of the soy sauce are laid over after the heat is off, and the parsley is still green when everything is stirred together. A heavy-bottomed pot leaves a layer of scorched rice as well.
The name means meat returned to the pot: pork belly is simmered whole, cooled, sliced thin, then fried again in the wok. That second round crisps the edges while the fat turns pleasantly chewy, and doubanjiang (chili bean paste) with fermented black beans coats it in a salty, spicy sauce. Leek and green pepper go in at the end and stay crunchy. How much soy sauce to add depends on the doubanjiang, as brands vary a lot in saltiness.