Quick Japanese Food Recipes – Soy Sauce

Cooking a delicious and visually appealing Japanese food is often considered very difficult to achieve. And it is often times true. The food served at an expensive, traditional Japanese restaurants are a production of delicacy and long years of training. Normal household without a trained chef in the kitchen certainly cannot spare so much time and effort every single day, however. So naturally, much like other countries, Japan has also developed quite a lot of quick and easy recipes without losing its ‘Japanese bits’.

Today, I’d like to introduce to you three easy recipes that uses ‘shoyu’, or ‘soy sauce’, and also can be made without a special ingredient.

1. Seasoned Rice with Chicken and Mushrooms

(Image: komi.co.jp)

Ingredients:

-Rice (450g before cooked)
-Shimeji mushrooms (150g)
-Maitake mushrooms (150g)
(sold at super markets like wholefoods. You can replace them with other mushrooms if you cannot find them, but Shimeji and Maitake are recommended!)
-carrot (3~4cm)
-Chiken thigh (250~300g)
★water (600 ml)
★Dashi soup stock (5g~7g if powdered)
★Cooking Sake (75g – 5 table spoon)
★Soy Sauce (45g – 3 table spoon)
★Sugar (10g – 2 tea spoon)
-Sesame Oil (5g – 1 table spoon)
-Cooking Oil (5g, 10g if you don’t have sesame oil)

Step 1:

-wash the rice and leave it in a sieve

Step 2:

-Cut the chicken (about 1cm x 1cm) and marinate it in soy sauce (5g), sake (10g), and sugar (2g) (the amount outside recipe)

Step 3:

-Chop the carrots into small pieces as shown in the picture
-Cut of the hard chips from the mushrooms (do not wash them!) and pull them apart into smaller pieces

Step 4:

-Heat the sesame oil and the cooking oil in the pan
-Put the carrots, chicken, and the mushrooms into the heated pan

Step 5:

-If the mushrooms start to look cooked, add all the ★ into the pan
-Stop the heat once it starts boiling
(If you have the time, let it rest for a while)

Step 6:

-Put the cooked ingredients aside and add the soup into the rice cooker
-Adjust the level of water, and add the ingredients

Step 7:

-Check the flavor, and add salt if it’s necessary
-Turn the switch on
-Wait until it’s ready! 😀

2. Corn Tempura

(Image: tripadvisor.jp)

Ingredients:

-1 corn
-Flour (45g – 3 table spoon)
-Baking soda (2.5g – half a tea spoon)
-Cold water (40~45g – about 3 table spoon)
-Cooking Oil
-Soy sauce (15g – 1 table spoon)

Step 1:

-Cut the corn into 3 pieces
-Shave the sides off of each pieces into 6 sheets of corns

Step 2:

-Begin heating up the oil
-Mix the baking soda, flour and water in a bowl, and add a little bit of salt
(If you can find it, you can also add some green laver powder in to the batter)

Step 3:

-Put the corn inside the batter and cover all the surfaces

Step 4:

-Once the oil is at 180C, put the battered corn into the oil
-When it becomes golden brown, put them out onto a cooking sheet

Step 5:

-spray the soy sauce over the fried corn

3. Fried Ginger Pork

Ingredients:

-Pork loin (200g)
-Cabbage for a side
-Cooking oil (2 tea spoon)
★ginger (juice) (5g – 1 tea spoon)
★cooking sake (5g – 1 tea spoon)
★Soy sauce (5g – 1 tea spoon)
〇Soy sauce (15g – 1 table spoon)
〇Cooking sake (30g – 2 table spoon)
〇Sugar (10g – 2 tea spoon)
〇Ginger (grated) (2.5g – half a tea spoon)

Step 1:

-Season the pork with ★

Step 2:

-Chop the cabbage as shown in the picture and place it on the plate

Step 3:

-Put the cooking oil in the pan and heat it up
-place the seasoned pork loins into the pan

Step 4:

-Take them out once its surfaces are cooked

Step 5:

-Add 〇 in the pan and heat it up until it boils
-Put the loins back in, and cook them in the sauce
(pour the sauce over the loin until it gets cooked with a spoon)

Step 6:

-Place it on the plate

Hope you enjoyed the recipe!

Let us know in the comments if you get to cook one of these. Also, let us know if you know a better way to cook these dishes :))