Japanese Food and Cooking

Sake

Sake is now a well-known term outside Japan but the usage is somewhat different in Japan. This post explains how as well as other terms related to sake drinking

焼き餅（やきもち）

焼（や）き is a noun form of the verb, 焼（や）く = to grill and 餅（もち） is a rice cake. So 焼き餅…

和える

和える（あえる/aeru） is a Japanese verb to mean “to dress [main ingredient] (with {a sauce})” and it’s often used in the…

Cooking Measurement

When you look at recipes, measurements such as “1 cup” or “2 Tablespoons” etc. are used for measuring volumes but…

精進料理（しょうじんりょうり/shoujin_ryouri）

Nowadays almost everybody eats meat in Japan. However, eating meat, especially beef, had been a taboo in Japan for a…

Is Chinese food 中華料理 or 中国料理?

chuuka_ryouri or chuugoku_ryouri? Have you had an experience that you went to a Chinese restaurant in Japan and the food…

Kaiseki

If you have read or heard about traditional Japanese multi-dish meals, you may have come across the word, かいせき/kaiseki or…

to fry

to fry 2 weeks ago, I wrote that the English word “to boil” is translated into 4 different Japanese words.…

たまごをやきます

A while ago, I wrote about a cooking verb 焼（や）きます/yakimasu. There I said I have to talk about frying eggs,…

to boil in Japanese

If you have followed a Japanese recipe, you might have noticed that 3 different verbs, 煮（に）る、炊（た）く and 茹（ゆ）でる, have been…

さしすせそ

さしすせそ is all the letters in the S column but in cooking さしすせそ has a special meaning: that is, to…

Mirin, Mirin style flavouring and Cooking Sake

If you are cooking some Japanese food, you will need a few Japanese seasonings. The most common ones are 酒（さけ/sake…

Shiitake

I have been writing about ingrediants for Japanese stock and today is the last of that series. 椎茸（しいたけ/shiitake） is one…

マジック

The caption says: マジックで書いてください。 Please write with “magic”. If you see this, what would you do? Will you say “I’m…

煮干し（にぼし/niboshi） – dried baby sardines

niboshi & chirimen jako Last 2 weeks, I have written about ingredients for Japanese stock – bonito flakes and kelp.…

昆布（こんぶ/konbu） – kelp

Last week, I talked about bonito flakes which we use to make stock. Today, I’m going to talk about the…

花かつお – bonito flakes

花かつお（はなかつお/hana_katsuo）, often translated as “bonito flakes,” is shaved 鰹節（かつおぶし/katsuobushi）. 鰹節（かつおぶし/katsuobushi） is dried, fermented and smoked skipjack tuna fillet. Did you…