How Chinese stir-frying snuck into Japanese homes
Stir-frying, often thought to be a part of all East and Southeast Asian cuisines, has a fairly short history in Japan. The method of rapidly cooking chopped food in oil over a hot fire was first introduced to the country by Chinese immigrants in ...
Eat Osaka teaches you how to cook like a local
Here's a joke unlikely to be endorsed by the Osaka Government Tourism Bureau: "There are three great reasons to visit Osaka: great people, great food and because Kyoto doesn't have an airport." The truth hurts, even if it's also mildly humorous. Osaka, a much more ...
As the holiday season rolls around, it's time to dash about in a mad panic in search of gifts that say "I've given this one some thought, honest." Or you can just let us do the thinking for you, with gift suggestions from our ...
'Nukadoko': The kitchen helper with a mind of its own
For years, I'd resisted the urge to start my own nuka-pickle pot. Although a great fan of nukazuke, those idiosyncratically earthy pickles fermented in rice-bran paste, I had concluded that the task of caring for the pickling medium was a responsibility best left to others. ...
Japan's take on the humble burger
There are two dishes that can be translated as "hamburger" in Japan. One is the all-American favorite, a beef patty sandwiched in a bun, which in Japanese is called hanbāgā. The other kind is similar to a Hamburg steak or Salisbury steak, made with ...
The average Japanese person eats around 320 eggs (tamago) per year, according to the International Egg Commission, placing it in the Top 3 worldwide. (In comparison, the average American eats around 250 eggs per year.) Eggs are enjoyed in many sweet and savory dishes, ...
The fact that corn or maize has a Japanese name — tōmorokoshi — indicates that it entered the country centuries ago, before it was the norm to import the name of a food as-is and spell it out phonetically (as with tomatoes or asparagus, ...
Meet the artisan family striving for a better fish flake
The local train bound for Yamakawa bucked and buckled down the coast, jouncing us until our teeth rattled, and Yamakawa was so dinky we had to walk across the train tracks to exit the station. The taxi took us through a confusing rabbit warren ...
Expo shows industrial-kitchen tech to fuel any foodie’s product lust
On a rainy day in June, the exhibition halls inside Tokyo Big Sight were brightly lit, accentuating the metallic gleam of the high-tech equipment on display at the Japan Food Machinery Manufacturers' Association expo. The atmosphere was slightly disorienting, a cross between a county science ...
Umami: the taste we love but can't describe
The word "umami" is, in many ways, literally a mouthful. First coined in 1909 by Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda, the term translates roughly as "deliciousness." With its satisfying, round consonants and open vowel sounds, the word approaches onomatopoeia — a phonetic approximation of the ...
Japanese summer garnishes invigorate the taste buds
In Japanese cooking, garnish is not just added to a dish to make it look pretty. The word to describe the herbs and vegetables that accompany a dish is yakumi, which means "medicinal flavor," and originally referred to the concoctions that practitioners of Chinese ...
Traditional jelly noodles are cooling as well as healthy
Summertime is the season for cooling jellies, and one of the most popular kinds in Japan is kanten. Overseas, this is known as agar-agar, but here kanten and agar are confusingly considered to be two distinctly different substances. Three types of gelling agents are commonly ...
