I need some help coming up with authentic Japanese meals and a meal plan in general. I'd like to try eating an authentic Japanese diet for a short while (for fun, mostly), but am having difficulty finding reliable information online as to what Japanese actually eat in their day-to-day. I'm looking for something a bit more specific than: rice, fish, miso soup, and the usual preconceptions.
The best article I've found so far is the following (regarding breakfast):
https://soranews24.com/2015/02/20/whats-really-for-breakfast-japanese-people-tell-us-what-they-usually-eat-each-morning-【photos】/
I've recently gotten into eating rice with furikake, and am looking to include tamago kake gohan as a breakfast staple. I'd like to discover similarly common, yet relatively unknown Japanese staple foods.
Are there any Japanese ingredients, components, or dishes that you'd like to share with the community? Let's try to focus on traditional home cooking rather than the usual restaurant fare.
Most recipes will require the basic "sa-shi-su-se-so" (sugar, salt, cereal vinegar, soy sauce, miso) to which you also need to add cooking sake and mirin, so have those handy. Also have some konbu dried seaweeds and katsuo-bushi (skipjack-tuna dried flakes) to make your base bouillon which will serve for your soups as well as a wide variety of dishes.
From the top of my head, and in no particular order, here are a few very common Japanese homemade dishes. Most are easy and not very time consuming to make:
- Niku-jaga (stew made mainly of sliced beef with potatoes). Serve with rice and shiso-dressing salad.
- Tonkatsu (breaded deep-fried pork cutlet). Serve with white rice and finely shredded cabbage.
- Saba no miso-ni (macquerel simmered in miso sauce). Serve with white rice and o-hitashi (boiled green leaf vegetables, for example spinach)
- Buri no teriyaki (yellowtail (?) cooked in a soy sauce based sauce), serve with white rice and some clam suimono soup
- Sanma no shioyaki (salt-grilled pacific saury), serve with rice and miso soup with tofu and wakame
- Sake-chazuke (white rice in green tea with grilled salmon flakes). I like to add umeboshi (sour plum) and wasabi as well. Serve as is.
- Omurice (stir-fried rice with chicken and ketchup covered with a thin omelet). Serve as is.
- Chahan (stir-fried rice with... Egg, onion, some kind of meat and whatever usable leftovers you have).
- Shoga-yaki (sliced pork marinated in ginger and cooked), serve with white rice and raw cabbage leaves.
- Soboro (chicken mince, egg, rice)
- Oyakodon (chicken with onions and eggs served on top of a white rice bowl)
- Gyudon, Butadon (similar to the above but without egg and with beef or pork instead of chicken)
- Curry rice (easy homemade roux in case you can't get the commercial stuff: butter, all purpose flour, Garam Masala, Turmeric powder, Fenugreek powder - if you've ever made a white sauce roux, it's about as easy)
- Then of course soba and udon noodles, very quick to make unless you have to make the noodles from scratch (which is not difficult but time consuming).
- Also, of course, sashimi. Again, usually easy to prepare if you know how to handle fish properly.
For a meatier version of miso soup, try tonjiru (miso soup with pork and vegetables).
These are all extremely basic dishes you'll find in most homes on a fairly regular basis (depending on the cook's taste, of course).
Shioyaki (salt-grilled) fish is good with basically any type of fish, it is also very easy to make as long as you know how to empty fish properly. And have something to grill the fish with.
I personally prefer it with "blue" fish (like sardines, pacific saury, horse macquerel and the likes). Cut the skin in a diamond pattern, use hand-milled rock salt, be generous but not too heavy-handed, grill the skin until it blisters and becomes a bit crunchy.
Add a little soy sauce as well as grated daikon radish, serve with white rice and miso soup, and that's it. Quick, simple but highly satisfying meal.
Other basic staple-things that aren't very well-known abroad or often forgotten are boiled root vegetables (lotus roots, burdock etc.) as well as stuff like konjac.
Also, Hiya-yakko (silk tofu with a drip of soy sauce, ginger and katsuo-bushi).
You should also check out kara-age, gyoza and even tempura, although those are time consuming when homemade.
Buri-daikon (yellowtail with daikon radish), buri-kama (salt-grilled yellowtail head), and asari no sakamushi (sake-steamed clams) are also staple dishes at my home, as well as a range of Okinawan dishes you might not be very interested in (ingredients might be hard to find abroad. Try hirayachi if nothing else, you're sure to find most of the ingredients anywhere, and it's like the easiest variation on crepes ever - but still delicious).
Then there are also all the Chinese-inspired dishes such as ebi-chili (shrimp in hot sauce), Mabo-dofu (tofu with minced meat in hot sauce) or subuta (sour-sweet pork).
