Japan's Food Recipes 1

Okayu 
 

Okayu (rice borridge) is easy to digest, so people in Japan commonly eat it when having a cold or so on. This is a basic recipe to make plain okayu. Various ingredients such as chicken and radishes can be added if desired.

Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Japanese rice (short grain rice)
• 3 cups water (adjust the amount of water based on your preference)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• for toppings (optional):
• chopped green onion
• sesame seeds
• umeboshi (ume pickles)

Preparation:

Wash Japanese rice and drain. Put water and rice in a heavy bottomed pot or earthenware pot. Leave it for about 30 minutes. Cover the pot and put it on medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat to low and cook the rice for about 30 minutes. Stop the heat and let it steam for about 10 minutes. Season with salt. Serve into individual rice bowls. Put toppings, such as chopped green onion, sesame seeds, or/and umeboshi if you would like.

 

 

 

Hinachirashi 

                         

It's a kind of chirashizushi (scattered sushi) which can be served for Japanese Girl's Day celebration. It's good to use various toppings for this sushi. Be creative and make sushi appealing to kids.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups prepared sushi rice
• 8 dried shiitake mushrooms
• 1/2 large carrot
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp mirin
• 2 eggs and 1 tsp sugar, beaten
• 2 Tbsp sakura denbu (seasoned fish powder) *optional
• 2 Tbsp white sesame seeds
• a half bunch of nabana (rape flowers) or green vegetables

Preparation:

Soak dried shiitake mushrooms in 3/4 cup of warm water. Cut carrots into thin flower-shaped pieces. Remove shiitake mushrooms from the water and slice them thinly. Put the water in a pan and heat on low heat. Put shiitake slices and carrot pieces in the pan. Add soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in the pan and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Make fine scrambled eggs and set aside. Boil nabana in a pan and cool in cold water. Chop boiled nabana finely. Mix sesame seeds in prepared sushi rice. Serve the rice on a large plate. Sprinkle simmered shiitake mushrooms. Further, sprinkle scrambled eggs, carrots, boiled nabana, and sakura denbu over the rice.

 

 

 

How to Make Sushi Rice

Prep the Sushi Rice

And the first ingredient is of course sushi rice. A special medium-grain rice, it's beautifully pearlescent. We're going to need 2 cups of that. Very important we're going to rinse that in a strainer very well for a few minutes, and then we're going to let that drain and dry for 1 hour.

Cook the Sushi Rice

After an hour pour, the rice in a heavy bottomed pot with a lid, and add 2 1/4 cups water. Bring that to a simmer and set you timer for 10 minutes. So we're going to cook that covered for 10 minutes on low heat.

Mix the Rice Vinegar

While we're waiting I'm going to get the rice vinegar ready. I have 1/4 cup of seasoned rice vinegar. You can make your own by using a 1/4 cup of regular rice vinegar, 1 1/2 tbsp of sugar, and 1 tsp of salt. Mix it until it dissolves.

Cool the Sushi Rice

So when the timer rings, turn off the heat and let it sit covered for 10 minutes. All right we're going to need something to fan the rice with. I just use this folder. After the 10 minutes pour it on a tray and drizzle over the rice vinegar a few teaspoons at a time. We're going to use 4 tablespoons all together.

Using the tip of a fork, we're going to fan and fluff, and fan and fluff so all the grains kind of dry and cool. They should be sticky, but separate. I'm going to drizzle over the rest of the rice vinegar. The fanning also gives the grains a cool shine, and a perfect texture if done correctly.

Sushi Rice Texture

Once that's been fanned and cooled, it's ready to work with. Now here's the key to how you know you have perfect sushi rice. You can form it into any shape you want, but when you go to bite into it, it just collapses.

So you want it to hold a shape for when you are making something like a California roll like I have here. You want it to hold together so you can eat it, pick it up with chopsticks, but when you bite into it you want it to just crumble, so it has that nice light airy texture.

And that it! Sushi rice - so easy to make. By the way, sushi is the name of the rice preparation. Sushi is not raw fish. Raw fish is what you put on sushi. I'm glad we got that cleared up. I hope you give this a try. Roll some sushi, and enjoy.