877 recipes. Page 27 of 37
As an Amazon Associate, we may earn from qualifying purchases.
Beef, bell pepper and onion alternate on soy-marinated skewers that are turned every two minutes for six to eight minutes. By the time the pepper edges are lightly charred, the glaze has reduced to a shine. They rest until the handles are cool enough to pick up.
Mackerel is oily and strong enough that a sauce built on both gochujang (Korean chili paste) and chili flakes does not bury it. A little ginger juice in the sauce takes the edge off its fishiness.
Dried shrimp, kombu, and pork bones simmer together into a broth that tastes of both the sea and the stockpot. Hawaii's saimin differs from ramen in that there is no separate soy tare; the strained broth is seasoned directly with soy sauce, salt, and pepper.
One roe-bearing female flathead flounder supplies both parts of this winter celebration dish from Iwami in Tottori: the white flesh is sliced as sashimi, and the roe is cooked through, crumbled into dry grains, and coated over each slice. The fish stays clean and springy under a thin, rich, slightly sandy layer of roe. It comes with soy sauce and wasabi and is eaten as soon as it is mixed; leftovers are not kept.
Oyster mushrooms torn along the grain chew pleasantly between the slices of beef, stretching the dish and making it lighter than beef alone. The sweetness in the marinade is gentle, since it comes from pear juice.
The chili sauce looks too thick, but no water goes in: the octopus releases its own liquid as it cooks and loosens it. The pork belly is browned in the pan first, and the octopus joins it over high heat for just a minute or two.
Songhwa mushrooms get a thin coat of perilla oil and soy sauce, then a sprinkle of ground perilla seed just before the heat goes off, layering the same nutty aroma twice. Their caps are thick, and generous slices hold together in the pan.
Each piece of mackerel gets a 20-second dip in hot water to set the outside white, then goes in a single layer over aged kimchi (mukeunji) lining the pot. By the end, the kimchi has soaked up the fish fat and turned glossy.
Crisp fried thin noodles are buried under a hot, glossy sauce of pork, shrimp, squid, and vegetables thickened with potato starch. Chen Pingshun of Shikairo created it in 1899 as a soupless version of champon. Nagasaki still distinguishes the original thick-noodle style from the thin, crunchy style most people eat today, and this recipe follows the latter with store-bought fried noodles. Kamaboko, bean sprouts, and shiitake are added late so the sprouts keep their snap. Where the sauce soaks in, the noodles soften, and the rest stays crunchy.
Mackerel fillets simmer skin-side up under a glossy glaze of miso, mirin, sake, and sugar, a staple of Japanese home cooking. Pouring boiling water over the fish first takes away surface odor, and thin slices of ginger in the pan deal with the rest.
Toasted in a dry pan until they crackle, the tiny anchovies get just a glaze of soy sauce and oligosaccharide syrup before being mixed into warm rice. Anchovies vary in saltiness from one package to the next, and saltier ones call for less soy sauce. Packed for a picnic, the rice balls taste much the same once cool.
Fresh bamboo shoots are only around for a short season in spring, so most of the year this banchan is made with canned or vacuum-packed shoots. Fresh ones need at least 30 minutes of simmering in rice-rinsing water to remove their acrid bite; canned ones need a thorough rinse to lose their tinny smell. Soy sauce and garlic keep the seasoning light, and the point is crunch: cooked too long, the shoots dry out and toughen.
Sliced sora, a Korean sea snail, stays chewy, with the gochujang sauce cooked right down onto it and no liquid left in the pan. A weak flame lets water pool and turns it into a stir-fry, so the pan goes on high. Trim off the tough innard end while slicing.
The radish is half-cooked on its own beforehand, so it is seasoned all the way through in the short time the mackerel takes. With just half a tablespoon of gochujang, the soy sauce leads and the heat stays gentle.
Served without broth, these Shan-style rice noodles from Myanmar are tossed at the table with a topping of minced chicken cooked in soy sauce, fish sauce, and chili flakes. Garlic and onion sizzled until translucent form the aromatic base, and a final drizzle of warm pan oil carries that fragrance into every strand. The amount of chili flakes alone sets the heat. The noodles come out of the pot 30 seconds short of the package time, so they keep their bounce through the mixing. If the rinsed strands start to stick, a teaspoon of oil tossed through them first keeps them apart.
Three Cup Chicken, as the Taiwanese name goes, comes from equal measures of soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine; here each is 3 tablespoons rather than a cup. Thai basil goes in just before the heat goes off, and its fresh scent rising over the dark soy turns it into something quite different from plain soy-braised chicken.
The butter is split in two: half to cook the pollock roe for just a minute, half to melt over the hot rice. The roe comes off the heat the moment its color brightens, while the eggs still pop.
Kale, usually eaten raw as a leaf wrap in Korea, is stir-fried here into chili-seasoned pork. It stays bright green and stands out against the red meat.
Chicken thigh pieces cook skin side down under a lid until the fat runs and the edges darken. Shallow cuts in the thick parts, no deeper than half the thickness, let the marinade in without the meat splitting open.
The konjac is blanched for two minutes first to get rid of its faint limey smell. Shallow crosshatching on both sides lets the soy glaze settle into the grooves, and once it is done it cools completely before serving, which evens out the seasoning.
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.
Central Tottori sets igisu, a dried seaweed also known as egonori, with nothing added: stirred over low heat until its fibers dissolve, it thickens the water itself and chills into blocks that slice cleanly, a little like yokan. Cut into rectangles, sprinkled with sesame, and eaten with soy sauce, it appears at Buddhist vegetarian meals as well as New Year, memorial, and festival tables.
The octopus gets two minutes over high heat, and the rice goes in as soon as it starts to curl. That leaves no time to mix sauce in the pan; it is stirred smooth before the burner is lit. For less heat, the chili flakes are dropped and gochujang used alone.
Beef marinated with pear juice and sugar is stir-fried over high heat with aged kimchi. The kimchi's sourness and salt make it less sweet than ordinary bulgogi, and its juices soak into the meat as they cook together. Regular napa cabbage kimchi works if there is no aged kimchi on hand.