(Part 2) Best products from r/JapaneseFood

I have both Wagamama cookbooks and use them all the time. Also, if you scroll down the page to the list of books others bought, there are quite a few good, basic japanese cookbooks for the beginner. Also have a google. This is a pretty handy site for beginners. Good luck and enjoy. (It also helps to find a local asian food shop for things like panko breadcrumbs, miso, wasabe, pickled ginger, and shoyu.)

It's rare that I get to a page on my frontpage that threads like yours appear. I guess it's your lucky day!

Last year I bought a ramen cookbook after reviewing what was available here in Germany. In the end I chose "Ramen: Japanese noodles and small dishes" by Tove Nilsson. What I liked most about it was that most of the book focused on actual Ramen you would find in Japan. You might think: what else should a ramen cookbook contain? From my observation: a lot of weird stuff that you'll never try that will be completely useless for you. Tove Nilsson covers the basics, the traditional dishes, some new and funky ones and shows a bunch of different ways on how to do certain recipes (what kinda broths you can use, three or four different ways to make chashu and so on)

Last December I finally made my first ramen from the book! And it was delicious. Classic Shoyu Ramen with a chicken-pork broth, homemade chashu. I still have to post the pics on /r/ramen ...

Bonus points for a bunch of Japanese side dishes like Gyoza, a lot of topping recipes and so on.

Not the exact same thing, but an approxamation (or a generic Japanese-style curry) is fairly easy to do.

Just get yourself one of these.

Make a sofrito with garlic, onions, celery, carrots. Make sure you caramelize the veg. Add meat of choice, brown. Add water (or better yet some stock), and the curry roux. Stir to dissolve, and cook for 30 minutes. Add a couple teaspoons of soy sauce at the end, and you're golden.

The topping is easy too. Get a pork chop (or any other flat piece of meat). Season, coat with flour, dip in egg, coat with panko or breadcrumbs. Deep fry, and serve with the curry.

Edit : Looking around on some Japanese websites, it seems Cocoichi has this trick of adding a bit of peanut butter (like a couple of teaspoons per serving) to give the roux an added depth.

I've bought the Wel-Pac fueru wakame from Amazon before (and also from local Asian groceries) and personally found it to be great for either putting in miso soup (or ramen) as well as using it for a salad. I don't chop it up, though. Just rehydrate it. I find the size of the seaweed as is works great for a salad. I do like to get more variety as a salad, though, so my preference is always to pick up several different types of dried seaweeds and have a nice mixture. But in a pinch, I think only having a single type available still works.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008MMJTX2

Of course! And if it doesn't taste like how you remember, just try adding some ponzu on your own. I mean this basically contains ponzu other than the citrus part, so you could just squeeze some lemon into it (or if you have access to it, bottled yuzu juice is pretty good). Or if it was dashi, it's pretty easy to make a half cup instant dashi, cool it, and add some in.

This is my favorite ponzu and yuzu juice brand. Their ponzu doesn't contain any soy sauce so you can blend it to the level you'd like, and it contains dashi ingredients for umami.

If you are using it every day like you say, then buying a better rice cooker would be well worth the investment and seems like a no-brainier.

I'm not that great at making rice any other way than in my Zojirushi and it does it perfectly every time.
You can also pick up extra of the inner pots for like $20... possibly less if you dig.

Alliteratively, you can start looking at making meals in your larger rice cooker.
Example: Rice Cooker Meals

Edit: The model Zojirushi I have WAC10

I recently received Everyday Harumi as a gift and it is delicious. The recipes, not the book.

She starts by listing all of the basic ingredients that are central to almost every Japanese meal: rice, soy sauce, mirin, sake, katsuoboshi, etc. She also covers how to make some basic sauces and soup stocks that are commonly shared among dishes.

There's also cookingwithdog, which is available for free on YouTube :)

By far, the best cookbook I've bought/used is "英語で和食/Recipes of Japanese Cooking"
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-Japanese-Cooking-International-Fujita/dp/B00117E5XO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292385360&sr=1-1

It is an amazing foundation for starting out cooking Japanese food. It has many common recipes, and each one is both in English and Japanese. Both I and my Japanese wife use it all the time. It also has a glut of interesting information about Japanese food culture/customs.
I really can't reccomend this amazing book enough.


You can look inside the book on the Japanese Amazon site:

http://www.amazon.co.jp search: 英語で和食


Also, about Harumi's books, they are great, and beautiful, but the recipes are more complicated, and I would recommend them as a next-step after trying out some of the stuff in the above mentioned book.

For rice, look for a short or medium grain rice. Long grain rice is what's typically served at chinese restauraunts and doesn't have the sticky texture that shorter grain rice has. In the US, it's much cheaper to get California-grown rice than getting Japanese imported rice. Also look at Korean brands of rice as they tend to be similar to Japanese rice. Many brands offer small bags (5 pounds or less) so you can try them and see what you like best and is also wallet friendly.

For a rice cooker, you can get away a basic $20 rice cooker. It won't make the best rice in the world, but it'll be tolerable if you want to save up for a high-end rice cooker.

Some high-end brands of rice cookers are Zojirushi, Tiger, Panasonic, and Cuckoo. The price tiers are similar across the brands and each tier incorporates more/different technologies. The levels will be basic (mostly just cook and warm settings), fuzzy logic/micom, neuro fuzzy logic, induction heating, pressure cooking. Some brands also have unique features like 'diamond coated cooking bowl' and they seem to be more gimmicky than anything else. Price ranges are ~$100 - micom, ~$150 - neuro fuzzy logic, ~$250 induction heating or pressure cooking, >$350 induction heating and pressure cooking. I have a Zojirushi rice cooker that I bought 3 years ago and still works perfect.

Rice cooker cup size will affect price too. Also, cheap rice cookers measure in cooked cups where more expensive models measure in uncooked cups. More expensive does not equal faster cooking (until you reach the pressure cooker level). A $20 rice cooker will cook rice in about half an hour, where a $250 induction heating rice cooker will take >45 minutes. The added time is because it includes soaking time for the rice and it operates at varying temperature levels during cooking, where the $20 rice cooker would just boil it the entire time.

You will probably need to use a forwarding service. Such as White Rabbit Express or Tenso. There are others, just google around and read reviews.

You will select the item you want to purchase from what store. For ease, let's say Amazon.co.jp because you can buy food on there. Here's one usukuchi shoyu company product. The forwarding service buys the product on your behalf and has it shipped to them. They then package the product and ship it internationally to you in Chile (sometimes they consolidate with other people also buying from Chile so you share the shipping cost, as there can be a local Chile worker who gets the package and then splits apart all the people's items and ships it through your local Chilean mail--it just depends on the logistics the company uses since that is their business). Along the way there are different fees but the companies are very open as to what they are and what percentage as well as providing you verification of all the steps in the products' life-cycle.

Since you are looking to buy food items, be sure to read the website FAQ to know if they will ship them. Some companies do not ship liquids. Some companies do not ship refrigerated goods. Some companies do not ship perishable items at all. etc.

Tenso for example says it can ship perishable goods as long as it can withstand room temperature. Which shoyu can as you can buy it on a regular grocery store shelf next to canned goods and seasoning powder. Tenso also says there is no service fee for being off Amazon (as they probably have an Amazon Prime account and receive free shipping to themselves).

As usual, buying in bulk is cheaper than buying 1 item. So if you want to purchase your shoyu, it's best to get a few other items since a lot of the charges are something along the lines of $10 fee for a package under 20 lbs. Which is a bit of a waste if you only buy a 3 lbs item since you have to pay the same $10 if you bought 19 lbs of items.

The Calbee Pizza potato chips are fucking awesome. http://www.amazon.com/Potato-Chips-Cheddar-Emmental-Cheese/dp/B003VMD89Y

They are the best chips ever. Also, Daily Yamazaki sells ume shiso flavor chips seasonally that might be even better than the pizza ones.

Maybe a bit late to a response but this one is really good if you like black garlic with your tonkotsu. You could always just not put it on though, the broth is good plain. http://www.amazon.com/Nissin-Demae-Garlic-Instant-Noodles/dp/B00CORJU5S

There's a 3rd party importer that sells it on amazon, but unless that's some mindblowingly good curry, $14 sounds a bit pricey IMO for a single serving.

FYI, House is the brand (top right of the box), and their curry roux's (along with the S&B brand) are fairly common in asian markets in the US - not that particular flavor though. I like their Kokumaro flavor, but it's all personal preference (as a point of reference, I find H&B's Golden Curry somewhat lacking in depth of flavor, being rather one note). Additionally, if you find one that you kind of like and/or is close to that one, you can of course play around with it to tweak it to your tastes.

Sorry for late response.

Shichimi pepper called "shichimi togarashi" in Japanese is like this and would be available at any Japanese grocery store. It contains powdered red chili pepper and other six seasonings ("shichimi" can literally be translated to "seven tastes"), would be always on the table in Japan, and especially indispensable to me for oyako-don, katsu-don, udon, tofu dishes like hiyayakko and much more other Japanese dishes!

Though Japanese dishes are generally plain and too plain for you westerners, a sprinkling of shichimi would make them a bit spicy and taste better!

As to how to make a sheet of nori into pieces, dried enough and crispy one would easily crumble by crumpling just like you'd do with a sheet of paper.

Thumbs up and a high five for having your kid not be weighed down by what other people think of as "normal" food. Honestly, if she likes to eat it, let her eat it, as long as it's a balanced and healthy diet. A classic japanese lunch is much higher in veggies and has leaner protiens (barring tempura and Karaage).

Chopsticks can be difficult to learn on, so try some trainer/toddler ones, they are usually plastic, reusable, and have fun themes, like animals. Here is an example of a blue bunny pair.

If you want the stainless steel yakitori grill they use in Japan, follow the link below. It's the same grill I've been using for years and it's worth the money. Just be aware that binchotan charcoal is very expensive. You can get Sumi charcoal that can get you three-quarters of the way to the heat, but it can't quite replicate the white oak.

https://ebay.us/aDybzk

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This is a grill on Amazon that looks like a fairly new offering and looks better made than most of the others I've seen on Amazon. I'd give this one a whirl. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07TN1BQSS/ref=cm\_sw\_em\_r\_mt\_dp\_U\_cUJiDbYF8AQPE

hmm, i'm having a hard time finding this as well.

i'd suggest purchasing something like this and melting them down in a saucepan to a syrup for infusing into drinks. may be able to get that nice ramune flavor that way? could be fun :)

This looks interesting, could you be a little more specific? How long is a long time? Do you buy something like ten pounds and have it last a few months? Also, for your defrosting method, do you defrost it sealed on the counter or sealed in a bowl of warm water?

As for myself, I usually get sushi grade fish from a japanese grocery store like Mitsuwa or Nijiya whenever I can find it on sale. Sometimes the taste is too fishy (there can be a reason it's on sale...) so I will marinade the slices in some hon tsuyu and serve with green onion on top.

Yeah they are thinner I think because they actually are dried.

They are super tasty though and a great thing to keep in a pantry for a quick meal.

Yeah!

Happy One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XLCRDKW

Angry One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XS7ZHZ4

If it had red pepper flakes in it, it's probably shichimi togarashi.