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What are the best recipes for a single individual who just wants some simple-rear end dinner without a whole lot of seasoning/sauce preparation? I'm imagining something where I can get home, get the rice cooker going, and put together a few side dishes while the rice cooks. Staple dishes like miso soup, pickled veg, and the like are great, but I'd also like to learn about meat and egg dishes as well. I really like the idea of cooking without relying heavily on complicated sauces or spices, and being able to compartmentalize your dishes into small chunks sounds like a great way to do batch meals - make a whole bunch of a few different dishes, fridge/freeze when you're done with them, then reheat when you get home and your rice is done. I've always been put off by the large amount of prep work and complication involved in other cuisines, so a simpler alternative would make it a lot easier to start cooking for myself. edit: I also want to get into eating more vegetables, like radishes and cabbage and negi and the like. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 23:56
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I stopped by an asian market today, and all I could find for dashi powder was relatively small packages - a salt-shaker's worth, or a box of a few packets. Am I only supposed to use a small amount of dashi powder, or is it typically consumed in large quantities? edit: If it helps, I got the box version of these. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 02:38
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RedTonic posted:Cooking With Dog might be a good resource for you, then. Here's their youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?cookingwithdog?videos Most of their recipes are for one or two portions, have relatively easy to obtain ingredients, and don't rely on too many appliances. They're also generally veg-heavy. CwD has playlists for donburi, seafood, and various meats. The videos are sort and the ingredient lists and some notes are contained in the video descriptions. I just wanna thank you for introducing this to me. Not only is this super helpful but it's also goddamn amazing. ＹＯＵ ＬＩＫＥ ＢＵＴＴＯＮ！ Lead out in cuffs posted:Yes, that stuff is the concentrate. You shouldn't be using more than a teaspoon or so at a time or you will be mega-dosing on sodium. Think of it like stock powder (which is what it is). That explains it! Glad I don't have to buy a million of those. What substitutes are there for dashi concentrate? It's basically powdered broth, so would other things like pork/beef/chicken broth/boullion/base work as well? (obviously it won't taste like dashi tho)
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Apr 18, 2015 12:47
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RedTonic posted:I'm glad you like it! Thanks for the link! I tried making Ginger Beef tonight, and it doesn't quite look the same. I got thin sliced beef from the grocery store, but it's way thicker and tougher than it looks in the picture. (EDIT: now that I'm actually eating it, it's not as tough as it looked, but definitely thicker) In the pic, it looks like it's practically shavings, while mine's more like fajita thickness. How did it get that thin? Do you just ask the butcher to cut it reaaaaaaally thin? I may have screwed it up a little, but the rest was pretty easy... I definitely like the sauce. I don't normally like ginger, but in this case it tastes pretty good! I think I just need to get the meat part down and figure out how to work scallions or onions into it. Learning how to make gyuudon would be loving awesome, too.
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Apr 19, 2015 01:46
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I found CwD via another goon's post (not sure whose, when, or what thread!) and love it.
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It's Christmastime, and I've been pestered into coughing up a Christmas list. I figured that it'd be a good chance to go ahead and request some Japanese cookbooks, and I chose a few that were linked in this thread - The Japanese Kitchen: 250 Recipes in a Traditional Spirit, Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, and The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches To Go. My diet's suffered now that I'm working full-time, and so far it's been 7/11 pizza, soda, and eating out every workday lunch - so it's time to learn how to actually cook for myself. I figured I'd also ask about other things like lunchboxes 'n poo poo. Pickle presses are apparently just "heavy thing + bag of salt", but I don't know if there's something I'm missing past that requirement. As for boxes, Monbento looks attractive, but I'm sure goons have better recommendations. Worse comes to worse, I can eat out of a tupperware container just fine.
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Dec 20, 2015 20:17
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I know that if I want to cook my own food in a healthy sense, I know to avoid obviously bad things like ramen and tonkatsu as well as heavy sauces like teriyaki or some poo poo. There's a couple things that made me stop and think, though. A lot of the recipes I read use a relatively large amount of sugar when putting together sauces or stews. It's even in egg dishes, for crying out loud. Does sugar have any sort of impact on food (outside of obvious needs like glazed sauces), or can it be omitted? How bad is karaage for you, really? It doesn't have any sort of thick starchy batter like American fried chicken, and in fact usually amounts to not much more than a plain dusting of flour+starch. I surmise that the majority of the "bad for you" stuff comes from the deep frying, but how much of that oil is actually transferred to the chicken? It's not like you're drinking the stuff. And if it's that much of a concern, isn't it just possible to panfry in shallow oil instead? There's all sorts of reasonable recipes like gomaae and kinpira, but things like the latter still have cooking oil somewhere in the mix. That's the one thing that stops me in terms of considering it healthy - but it's certainly miles ahead of pasta and ground beef. Otherwise, things are going pretty well for me in terms of learning to cook Japanese food.  I'm currently working on weekly meal planning, which is harder than you'd think...but at least you can make large batches of lunch components.
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Jan 10, 2016 21:26
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I totally recommend the Cooking with Dog tofu steak recipe. I made it and although I'm not a fan of shimeji and enoki, the taste was undeniably great. Seconding removing all the water from the tofu, though, otherwise it'll be all soggy and gross. When making shiozake, do you cut the salmon fillet into pieces first and then salt, or salt the whole thing and slice right before freezing? I see different ways of doing it out there, and I'm not sure if it actually matters. I made some shiozake before and it turned out pretty good, but I think I used too much salt, if that's even possible. I'm working on incorporating more green into my lunches, since so far it's mostly been white, brown, and orange (carrots). I've made more meat than veg, which sucks, and I haven't done much with egg. I can really only think of iritamago and tamagoyaki, and I'm not a huge fan of the latter (probably cause I hosed it up when I first made it). Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 04:21
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I tried making it again this time, making sure to salt both sides - but the skin turned out to be really tough to cut through by the time I took it out ~3 days later. Is that just because of the salt, or did I mess something up? I also heard that you're supposed to freeze it before cutting or something, and I didn't do that this time. The paper towels I wrapped the fish in also ended up sticking to the meat, and I had to cut bits and pieces of it off. Are there alternatives to wrapping the fish up in paper, or is that the accepted method?
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Jan 27, 2016 10:42
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That might be the case. My research seems to suggest that the salmon is getting cured by resting in salt for so long. I don't know if the amount of salt used matters there, or if I really need those paper towels to soak up the moisture at all. Next time I make it, I'll try just 24 hours.
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Jan 27, 2016 20:01
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So the flesh is not meant to get somewhat tougher, become a deeper red-orange, and become a little "sticky"? I'm beginning to wonder if I didn't just let the fillet go bad or something instead.
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Jan 28, 2016 18:36
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I tried making tuna salad onigiri recently, but I hosed it up.  I can't quite get the thickness of the rice right such that it doesn't immediately fall apart. I think the greasiness of the mayo might contribute to that too. I should also buy some nori...Kinpira loving rules, too. One of my favorite side dishes to make is just plain ol' stir-braised carrots. Shred them in the Benriner, stir fry with some rayu and salt, braise in sake and soy sauce, reduce, then toss in some sesame seeds. loving delicious, and really good for . I need to learn how to make more than just carrot kinpira, though. I need to learn how to cook anything more complicated than carrots, actually. Anyway, what are some good variations for tamagoyaki? I'm having trouble making good versions of it, since I can barely make more than 2-3 layers of the drat thing, but I see cool looking variations like shredded carrot, nori, mushrooms, crab sticks, etc. I made some with crappy Sargento cheese in it and it ended up being really greasy and gross when cold, so that's not happening again.
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Mar 10, 2016 09:14
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I should probably buy a mold, but I don't make onigiri often. Maybe I'll search for one next I stop by H-Mart.Gilgamesh_Novem posted:Disclaimer : I am not Japanese, but Korean. English is not my native language so please excuse any grammar mistake. No worries, I getcha! I was using Botan calrose rice, which is pretty much the type of rice I wanna use, so I don't think the rice is the problem. I screwed up by making it too thin on one side and the tunamayo spilled out, then when I tried to fix it it spilled out the other end,and then I got frustrated and just mashed the whole thing together and made it vaguely triangle shaped. My technique sucks, so I think I'll just use a mold next time. I do want more green and red/orange in my eggs, so the minced broccoli and carrot sounds great! Do you add broth to your eggs, or is it just the eggs themselves? I've heard that adding some sort of broth makes them fluffier, but I've never tried.
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Mar 11, 2016 14:48
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I've seen those tools before, but never used one. I'm still getting used to cooking tamagoyaki and eggs in general, so I'll wait on using one of those until I know what I'm doing I recently got a meat pounder, pressure-pickler, and some divider cups.  I'm gonna try and design my lunches better, so far they've been kind of underwhelming due to a lack of variety and really tasty stuff. My current repertoire is:bento bullshit posted:Meats: panfried chicken thigh, ginger pork, ginger bulgogi, negimaki (sort of), carrot-stuffed chikuwa (these are pretty cool), meatloaf miniburgers, shiozake I still feel like my lunches lack variety and visual appeal. I've also got a bunch of chicken tenders and such stuck in my freezer that I don't know what to do with; at one point I was gonna use them to make really lame karaage but it turns out that fried things are unhealthy and high in calories, who knew! So I didn't make karaage. But I still wanna do something with them... I've also thought about incorporating some Korean banchan into the list. It's basically a whole bunch of veggie sides, which I remember enjoying last time I went out to a Korean restaurant. Learning those would drastically improve the list of veggie sides. What have people seen in bento lunches? Has anyone put their own together? What are good rules to go by? I've read the articles on justbento.com, and it's certainly got me started, but I wanna here other people's experiences too.
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Mar 13, 2016 21:51
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I've definitely learned that I have to get up early to make lunches...ugh. Worth it, though. I'm definitely taking you up on that PM offer, I've gotta expand my side dish rep! That, and I haven't had Korean food in a long time... I want to show off, so this is what a typical lunch looks like:  quote:ginger pork (was way too thick) with pickled cabbage, iri tamago (scrambled egg) on rice, collard greens namul (sesame salad dressing), savory broth tamagoyaki (rolled omelette), fish cake tubes stuffed with carrots, daikon-carrot rice vinegar salad with dried cranberries I'm trying to hit about a 1:1:1 veg:meat:carb ratio, and to keep the color variation up. I hear that's important to properly balancing a bento. Also divider cupppp 
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Mar 14, 2016 13:46
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I definitely wrecked the shogayaki, namul, chikuwa, and iri tamago in that picture - but the tamagoyaki came out really bland and unappetizing.  It tasted underseasoned or something, no real flavor to it, and combined with the cold, it felt kinda gross. The kohaku namasu benefits from having some cranberries in it, but the taste and smell of rice vinegar is still wayyyyyy too strong for me. Although I may have used too much when I was putting it together - maybe I'll try again and actually measure the ingredients this time! The tamagoyaki, sadly, is just disappointing. How much dashi stock are you supposed to use? Sake, mirin, soy sauce, all that? It felt like biting into a watery egg white cake or something. Definitely not as flavorful as I would have wanted. I had more leftovers than I wanted, so today's only a partial success. Doesn't help that I took Ritalin in the morning so my appetite was totally gone, but still.
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Mar 14, 2016 22:57
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I've noticed...I was weirded out by the concept of a sweetened omelette, even though I really like iri tamago, so when I first had it I decided to favor savory dishes instead. Unfortunately, that doesn't quite work out for eggs I'll have to up the sugar content for the eggs, which is an odd concept to think about. Maybe I'll just make a cake Hmm, maybe if I figure out a savory sauce to cover the omelette in, it'll be okay...? Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Mar 15, 2016 |
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Mar 15, 2016 06:38
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Yeah, sugar actually does make things taste quite a bit nicer. I guess I'll just have to pair them up with some less sugary side dishes.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:22
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That reminds me, actually - I bought a pickle press recently, one of these. I've tried pickling a few things in it, like carrot, cabbage, and cucumber. The carrot and cabbage came out okay-ish but were way too salty, so I reduced the amount of salt to ~2% of the veg weight for the cucumbers I did today. I let them sit for about 12 hours and tightened every once in a while, and I just took some out...they still just taste like cucumbers. Not very pickle-y at all. They don't have much flavor to them and they're definitely not what I would have expected from something called "pickles". How do people usually use these things? Is it literally just "salt, press, sit for a day", or is there more nuance to it? I would love having easy access to pickled vegetables whenever I want, but I don't think I'm getting this right
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Mar 27, 2016 07:31
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I mean, not really. I know they're not the same thing at all. But I do want flavor to them - the cucumbers just taste like watery cucumbers and not much else at all. Some way to give them a particular taste would be great, but maybe that's not the intent. What do people usually include in the pressing process? I'm guessing stuff like herbs and spices aren't involved?
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Mar 27, 2016 07:55
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I got rid of the cucumbers and jalapenos, unfortunately. I don't think I can afford to let my pickle press be taken up for a week by them, I have to pickle other things for this week's lunch options. So far so good on those, by the way, I'm working some Korean side dishes into it too - and considering other cuisines like Indian or Thai for proteins as well. Need to figure out how to pan fry chicken nuggets, too.
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Mar 28, 2016 03:01
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I have the 1 liter version which is way smaller. Slicing the vegetables thinner might help, but you're right about Japanese salt-pickling not really focusing on strong flavor and the like, so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. I've had decent success with cabbage leaves and various greens, though, which is good! I just wonder if asazuke is only for that specific type of pickles, which is a little disappointing, but oh well. And yeah, salt pickles don't keep for very long, I've found. I'll have to figure out other batch foods to make. Kimchi made in this thing sounds like it'd fuckin rule, I do have some gochujang so maybe I'll try making it! (disappointment incoming)
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Mar 28, 2016 13:53
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Pegnose Pete posted:Y'all have me inspired to try my hand at kimchi for the first time. I live in Japan so most of the stuff shouldn't be too hard to find. Gag. I loving hate raw tomatoes, both cherry and normal size. The rest looks great, though! I don't know why I'm not posting my own lunches in this thread. Welp, that's gonna change. Just as soon as I make another...
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Apr 10, 2016 14:43
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Critique my lunch! Sweet potato salad, panfried chicken nuggets on green bean goma-ae, carrot-zucchini kinpira, iri tamago on white rice, carrot-stuffed chikuwa, and salt-pepper chicken thigh on Napa cabbage leaf asazuke. The sesame dressing doesn't stick very well to the green beans, I find. It's a little disappointing. How do I make it adhere to the beans better? I had made blanched asparagus as a side dish as well, but they turned out awful. They were mushy and bland, so I added salt to try and help that...too much salt. Whole thing was ruined.  So I added some chikuwa instead, which I'm not in love with, but works as filler I guess.This is a good example of why you can never have too many side dishes. I actually just barely had enough to put a lunch together. Normally I have some collard/spinach namul, but I got lazy and didn't make any for the week. I'll have to do that when I get home. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Apr 12, 2016 |
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Apr 12, 2016 14:07
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themongol posted:just got a tsukemono press! I've had good success slicing carrots and celery thin and pickling those, along with the celery leaves. Maybe try adding some dill or other fresh herbs to make them taste nice! White/savoy cabbage works too, but I wasn't a fan of Napa cabbage for some reason. You can pickle cucumbers as well, but they don't end up like typical western pickles - they're still cucumbers, unfortunately. In general, the quality of the vegetables you use don't change much. Incidentally, the rule of thumb is to use 2% of the total pickling material's weight in salt. So, if 400g of stuff is going into the press, rub in 8g of salt.
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Apr 24, 2016 21:45
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I made oyakodon for dinner, and I'm surprised at how simple it is. Stock, soy sauce, mirin, simmer some onions and chicken thighs in it, pour on some egg when the thighs are done. Spoon over rice. I forgot that I had dashi and used chicken stock instead, but that worked just as well. Definitely making that again in the future, especially since it was really easy.
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Jan 17, 2017 04:48
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I've made Chaliapin steak twice now and oh my god, how do people stop themselves from eating this literally every night? I haven't gotten cooking the steak down yet, it's still kinda tough and chewy, but the caramelized onions are just sublime. I really need to get a food processor so I don't have to manually grate the onion, though. 
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Feb 1, 2017 01:16
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:If you're using a chewier cut, try manually tenderizing it once. It's not as pretty looking, but I find that the results speak for themselves! I used a cubed steak tonight.  I think it might be how I'm cooking it, the inside isn't pink or anything.
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Feb 1, 2017 01:24
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:Hmm! Maybe you're cooking on too high heat, or it really legitimately could still be the cut of beef, assuming your cubesteak isn't a straight up ground beef patty. Sometimes a mechanically tenderized cubesteak will still be kinda tough, which isn't necessarily a bad thing -- it's an economical cut, so concentrating on enhancing its flavor might be more practical than sweating over the tenderness. For regular pounded/perforated style cubesteak, I still salt and rest it, bring the meat to room temp, then cook, and let it rest a bit longer much like a regular cut before plating and saucing. High heat is a good guess. It's probably a combination of that and the time spent sauteeing. It's not like, tough, so maybe I was overhyping the tenderness portion of it all, but I'm still curious what the tenderness is supposed to be like. Salting is also a good idea...does Chaliapin steak have a sauce associated with it? I thought it was just onions. I tried making shogayaki once or twice, but I always had to manually pound out the pork to the right thickness since I could never find pork slices like the ones in that video. It never quite came out right.  But shogayaki sauce is pretty ace.
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Feb 1, 2017 03:09
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Today I hosed up oyakodon: - put the heat on way too high so all the sauce and liquid evaporated - chicken thigh went bad and all I had were eggs so I could only make kodon - as such I used two eggs and extra onion+green onion as filler, ended up making a weird egg dish - used way too much chicken stock over soy sauce and mirin, sink's already full and I didn't wanna do dishes Dish came out tasteless and unfilling. Next time, I gotta actually measure my stuff out and pay attention to the drat recipe. As an aside, am I required to use one of the fancy pans for this, or would a 6-inch saucepan work fine?
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Feb 7, 2017 16:56
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I had chicken stock already and I was lazy and didn't feel like pulling out the dashi powder. vv I should do it the right way next time. If it matters, this is the recipe I was (supposed to) follow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBSKWTtzumg I really shouldn't be going off on my own, I'm nowhere near good enough to pull that off.
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Feb 7, 2017 22:48
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I've been trying to avoid carbs (which doesn't jive too well with Japanese food, I know), so I didn't make rice or anything. Plus I have my slow cooker going so plugging in the rice cooker too would've tripped a breaker or something.
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Feb 7, 2017 23:06
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Yeah, it's...been kinda rough. I'm probably gonna lay off the no-carbs thing, at least for stuff I cook myself. It's really, really disappointing without them. And yeah, I boiled onions and eggs.  It wasn't that bad, considering, though I sorely missed the rice while I was eating it. Traditional Japanese recipes don't really take well to substitution and improvisation, which sucks a bit for me since I have to go out of my way to get some of the less common ingredients, but I'll deal with it. I've definitely ended up with crappy food more when trying Japanese food than other cuisines.
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Feb 8, 2017 00:30
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What's the alternative to dashi powder? Making your own? Are the I gredjenrs for that something I can pick up in my grocery store? MSG is not really a concern. It occurs naturally in lots of Asian food. The hysteria around MSG is a combination of corporate interests diverting attention away from poor health as a result of increasing use of sugar and HFCS, and of a rather racist domestic campaign against the Chinese via Chinese food. MSG is not the enemy.
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Feb 8, 2017 15:19
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Apparently the secret to good stock is gelatin, which is why people make stock from bones, feet, etc.
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Apr 12, 2017 14:14
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Ask me about trying to follow a Japanese potato salad recipe and accidentally buying sweet potatoes.
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Apr 30, 2017 15:58
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I can't think of any, either. All that's coming to mind are imports like curry and ma po tofu.
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May 2, 2017 15:07
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How thick is pork shogayaki supposed to be? In the Cooking with Dog video, it's pretty thin and tender and is all floppy when you pick it up, while in other videos, it tends to be thicker such that it retains its shape when lifted. I tried making shogayaki in the past, but I could never get the pork so thin on my own, and it didn't come out particularly well. I like quickly-cooked recipes like that in the summer, cause I don't want to add heat to my apartment by cooking something for a long time (e.g. braising). edit: Is it possible to use something like a Benriner to cut meat thinly? I've not had very good results by pounding out chicken or pork, it always ends up shredded or nowhere near thin enough. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Jul 22, 2017 |
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Jul 22, 2017 19:45
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:If you want thinner cut meat, try asking at the meat counter where you shop. Most places can oblige you. Eating out, I've seen it mostly thinner, kind of like the standard hamsteak thickness. (Less than a cm?) Not like shabu shabu thin. More like breakfast steak thin. No meat counter where I usually shop, unfortunately - just a butchery in the back that they don't open to customers. I might just go further out to get my stuff. 1cm is a little over 1/3 inch - I think that's doable!
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Jul 22, 2017 20:07
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large hands posted:thanks man, my brother gave me poo poo for using Chinese bbq pork and an onsen egg instead of soft boiled or w/e is traditional. That sounds like the actual traditional ingredients, so I don't know what your brother is talking about.
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Jul 29, 2017 19:09
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I often see something like shredded cabbage as a side dish in Japanese dishes. Is this thin sliced Western green cabbage, or Napa cabbage or something? Does it usually come with a dressing, or just on its own?
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Aug 2, 2017 16:00
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