Japanese Cuisine Categories and Food Groups |

Japanese Cuisine Categories and Food Groups

| By Roy Rasmussen | Category: Food

Japanese cuisine follows a few simple food preparation principles, expressed in an amazing variety of dishes. If we attempt to boil the rich soup of Japanese cuisine down to its basic ingredients, we find there are five major cooking categories that form the backbone of a traditional Japanese meal, supplemented by a few supporting groups like soups, sweets, and teas. Lets tour the major categories and food groups that go into the rich mixture that is Japanese cuisine.

Japanese Cuisine Cooking Categories

Japanese cookbooks group recipe collections around five major categories defined by five major cooking methods:

Serving raw (sashimi, considered a “cooking” method because of the preparation involved)
Grilling (yakimono)
Boiling or simmering (nimono)
Steaming (mushimono)
Deep-frying using tempura and other ingredients (agemono)

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art

In addition to these cooking categories, cookbooks also cover popular Japanese food groups such as:

Rice
Noodles
Soups
Sushi
Sweets

Japanese table manners dictate a specific sequence in which foods falling into different categories should be eaten, and we will follow suit here. We will begin with the staple foods of rice and noodles, usually served with soup; proceed through the five major cooking categories; and finish up by considering categories of foods like pickles, sweets, and tea that conclude a Japanese meal.

Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking

Varieties of Rice and Noodles

Rice, called gohan or meshi is the staple of Japanese cuisine. It is so central to eating that the word for “rice” is built into the names of meals. For instance, breakfast is referred to as asa gohan, or “morning rice.”

Accordingly, Japanese rice comes in a wide range of varieties. Plain cooked white rice is standard. Other popular forms of rice are brown rice, glutinous rice (“sticky rice”), and red rice. Rice is eaten in both raw and cooked forms. Popular rice dishes include:

Rice bowls
Rice porridge (congee)
Sushi, which is a category that includes a number of dishes prepared with vinegared rice, most famously seafood, but also vegetables
Curry rice
Donburi, which is cooked rice with another food on top of it, such as tempura shrimp, chicken, or beef
Fried rice
Rice balls, often wrapped in seaweed (onigiri)
Sticky rice cake (mochi)

Noodles often serve as a substitute for rice or supplement rice. Some popular Japanese noodle dishes are:

Soba: thin brown noodles like spaghetti, made from buckwheat flour or buckwheat and wheat flour, served chilled with a dipping sauce or in a hot broth like noodle soup
Udon: thick white noodles made from wheat, usually served hot in a flavored broth made from dashi stock, soy sauce, and mirin
Somen: thin white noodles made from wheat, thinner than soba or udon, usually served chilled with a dipping sauce as a summer specialty
Ramen: thin light yellow noodles, usually served in hot chicken or pork broth with various toppings, introduced from China

Soups

Soup accompanies rice in Japanese cuisine. It is usually eaten early in the meal.

The most characteristic soup is miso soup, made from mixing a paste of the same name that is usually derived from soy with a stock called dashi made from kelp and tuna. To this is added solid ingredients selected according to season and aesthetic emphasis, such as negi onions and tofu, seaweed, or potatoes.

When pork is added to miso soup, it is called tonjiru, meaning “pork soup,” another popular dish.

Dangojiru is another popular soup that combines miso with dumplings and vegetables.

Japanese clear soup, or suimono, is another important type of Japanese soup. It is made from water, chicken stock, and soy sauce, garnished with vegetables and fruits such as mushrooms, scallions, celery, carrot, and lemon or lime.

Raw Foods

Turning from rice, noodles, and soup to the first major cooking category in Japanese cuisine, we now consider raw foods in the sashimi category. Sashimi, which consists of fresh raw meat sliced into thin pieces, is considered the finest food in Japanese cuisine. It is normally consumed first to savor the flavor before other foods are eaten.

Sashimi is usually made from fish or seafood, with salmon and squid being especially popular. Sashimi can also be prepared with bean curd, chicken, beef, or horse.

The meat is usually draped over a garnish, such as a daikon radish with permilla leaves. A dipping sauce such as soy or wasabi is often used.

Grilled Foods

The second major Japanese cooking category is grilling, or yakimono. Yakimono encompasses a range of grilled and pan-fried fish, fowl, and meat. Two types of yakimono known in the West are chicken terikayki and potstickers. Japanese yakimono also includes fried octopus, grilled eel, flame-grilled fish, and barbecued chicken and lamb, among others.

Simmered Foods

The third category of Japanese food preparation is boiling or simmering, nimono. Two popular types of nimono are stewed pork belly (kakunisokinizakananikujaga

Nimono dishes are often simmered in soy sauce, mirin, or sake.

Steamed Foods

The fourth major category of Japanese cooking is steaming, or mushimono. Mushimono dishes usually contain steamed chicken, eggs, fish, or vegetables. A popular example is chawanmushi, an egg custard dish similar to Chinese steamed eggs that mixes gingko seeds with soy sauce, dashi, mirin, and other ingredients such as shiitake mushrooms, shrimp, and other vegetables and seafood.

Mushimono foods are sometimes treated with sake.

Deep-Fried Foods

The last major category of Japanese food preparation is deep-frying, agemono. Agemono foods may be prepared in three basic ways. The method of agemono preparation best known in the West is tempura battering. Freshwater fish and certain vegetables may be fried without adding a coating (suage). Foods such as chicken may be dredged or covered in flour or starch before frying (karaage).

Pickles

Tapanyaki, Japanese Cooking

The flavor of Japanese meals is enhanced by following up the main course with pickled or salted food, called tsukemono. Tsukemono includes pickled cucumbers as well as hundreds of other vegetables and fruit and pickled seafood such as salmon caviar, pollock roe, shellfish, and seaweed.

Sweets

The Japanese palette includes a taste for sweets, okashi. A popular category of Japanese sweets is a class of confectioneries called wagashi that are usually eaten with tea. Examples of wagashi are sweet rice cakes (mochi), rice dumplings (dango), and sweetened beans (amanatto). Japanese sweets also include sweetened bread, wafers, and cakes, shaved ice, and ice cream made from ingredients such as green tea.

Tea

Japanese sweets are usually served with tea, our last item on our survey of the Japanese menu. Green tea (ryokucha) is by far the most popular type of tea, so much so that its name is synonymous with “tea.” Japanese green tea comes in a wide variety of specialties, such as unground sencha, powdered matcha, shade-grown gyokuro and late-harvested bancha. No matter what your cup of tea, Japanese cuisine includes food to appeal to any taste.

Japanese Cuisine Resources

Etiquette in Japan: Eating and Drinking
History of Japanese Cuisine
Food Customs in Japan

Japanese Food and Cooking

$225.85

This is a comprehensive and beautiful guide covering all aspects of Japanese cuisine, from its history and underlying philosophy, to its unique ingredients, methods of preparation, and cooking techniques.

Easy Japanese Cookbook: The Step-by-Step Guide to Deliciously Easy Japanese Food at Home

$17.96

Hand-molded sushi, swordfish teriyaki, pan-fried gyoza and sashimi-if these are all dishes that you'd love to be able to prepare and eat at home, then look no further! Aimed at those new to the foods and techniques used in Japanese cooking, this guide to one of the world's greatest cuisines takes you through the process of creating delicious Eastern dishes step-by-step. All the ingredients and methods are fully illustrated, and each of the 70 recipes is divided into simple stages that explain the basic methods and equipment needed to prepare delicious soups, sushi, sashimi, salads, rice, noodles, and desserts. With stunning photography throughout, and a Japanese music CD to set the atmosphere for dinner, this is the one-stop Japanese cookbook that's sure to delight beginners!

First Book of Japanese Cooking: Good Food for the Home and Family

$134.12

First Book of Japanese Cooking: Good Food for the Home and Family

A Dictionary of Japanese Food Dictionary of Japanese Food: Ingredients & Culture Ingredients & Culture

$10.92

At last, what every Westerner in a Japanese restaurant or market needs: the first truly comprehensive dictionary of Japanese food and ingredients.

The Decorative Art of Japanese Food Carving: Elegant Garnishes for All Occasions

$16.30

Japanese cuisine is renowned for the beauty of its presentation. Among the key elements in this presentation style are mukimono-the decorative garnishes and carvings that add the final flourish to a dish. It might be a carrot round in the shape of a plum blossom. Or a scattering of cherry blossoms plucked from a radish. Perhaps a swallow, a butterfly, a ginkgo leaf or a cluster of pine needles. Whatever the motif, it will have been created to delight the eye and the palate with its shape, color, and taste. In The Decorative Art of Japanese Food Carving, internationally acclaimed chef Hiroshi Nagashima offers 60 edible garnishes and food carvings for home, party or professional use. Some are designed to be set on top of the food. Others are fashioned to hold the food-and sometimes, they simply are the food. Each is introduced in full color, with easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, sample food arrangements, further ideas and secret, insider tips for successful presentation. Most are simple enough for the amateur chef to master, although a few are quite challenging and require much practice. Nagashima's instructions rely on household utensils found in a typical American kitchen-from knives to peelers to cookie cutters-and use familiar, easily attainable ingredients. The Decorative Art of Japanese Food Carving is more than a practical handbook, however. It is also an inspiration book, filled with creative suggestions and inventive ideas to enhance and transform the way we cook.

The Essence of Japanese Cuisine: An Essay on Food and Culture

$47.47

Japanese cuisine in its cultural context.

Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity

$27.12

Over the past two decades, the popularity of Japanese food in the West has increased immeasurably-a major contribution to the evolution of Western eating habits. But Japanese cuisine itself has changed significantly since pre-modern times, and the food we eat at trendy Japanese restaurants, from tempura to sashimi, is vastly different from earlier Japanese fare. Modern Japanese Cuisine examines the origins of Japanese food from the late nineteenth century to unabashedly adulterated American favorites like today's California roll. Katarzyna J. Cwiertka demonstrates that key shifts in the Japanese diet were, in many cases, a consequence of modern imperialism. Exploring reforms in military catering and home cooking, wartime food management and the rise of urban gastronomy, Cwiertka shows how Japan's numerous regional cuisines were eventually replaced by a set of foods and practices with which the majority of Japanese today ardently identify. The result of over a decade of research, Modern Japanese Cuisine is a fascinating look at the historical roots of some of the world's best cooking and will provide appetizing reading for scholars of Japanese culture and foodies alike.

Easy and Healthy Japanese Food for the American Kitchen

$19.01

Balancing the delicate flavors of Japanese cuisine with ingredients and equipment found in the average American kitchen, these quick-to-prepare recipes are designed to accommodate the hectic and busy lifestyles most Americans endure. For all enthusiasts of Japanese food, this sure-to-please cookbook is walso for those looking to prepare healthier meals for their families.

Tags: cooking, Japanese cuisine, recipe collections, table manners