20 Japanese Recipes That’ll Add Some Asian Flair to Your Life

Nagoya Tebasaki (Japanese Fried Chicken)

If what you’re after is authentic Japanese food that’ll stick to your ribs, there’s a treasure trove of recipes in Japanese Soul Cooking by Tadashi Ono.

Try these Japanese chicken wings, for example, which benefit from a handful of Asian flavors including soy sauce, miso, sake, and tobanjan – a spicy fermented red bean paste you can find in specialty stores (or on Amazon). The cookbook will also show you how to make various types of curry, tempura, gyoza, and more.

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Teriyaki Salmon Buns

Once you’ve mastered how to make a basic yeast dough, you can do more than baking. Try your hand at making steamed buns, the perfect filling for succulent meat and tender fish.

As salmon bakes in the oven, get a steamer going on the stove. The bun dough is laid out on parchment paper and then gently placed on the steamer. It takes less than ten minutes for them to get perfectly soft and puffy.

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Somen Noodle Salad with Snap Peas & Radish

This Japanese noodle dish, served cold, is perfect for spring and early summer. It features radishes, which aren’t exactly sought out in the United States, but are a staple of Japanese cuisine.

Originally from the Mediterranean coast, radishes have been cultivated in Asia for over a millennia – and for good reason. One of the most nutritious root vegetables, radishes offer a lot of vitamin C and minerals with hardly any calories.

The noodle salad is served with a dashi soup as the dressing, but it’s ok to leave out the bonito and dashi if you make it with broth instead.

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Sunomono (Japanese Cucumber Salad)

This salad is versatile, not just in terms of what it can be served with. Depending on how much prep work you want to do, it can be a simple side dish with diced cucumber, or an elegant starter course for a special dinner.

A mandolin slicer will make quick work of slicing the vegetables paper thin, and then you just have to artfully arrange them on a plate.

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Soba Noodle Salad with Miso-Roasted Asparagus

Instead of using a base of lettuce, Japanese salads tend to use cabbage or pickled vegetables – unless you go with noodles, that is.

And there’s a vast variety to choose from in Asian cuisine, including rice noodles, egg noodles, and soba noodles made from buckwheat. They’re perfect for pasta salad because they don’t get soggy or too soft, and soba noodles will hold up in the fridge for several days.

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Japanese Pork & Ramen Soup

Cooking Japanese food doesn’t necessarily require a trip to a specialty store. In a pinch, you can substitute white miso for tahini (sesame seed paste).

This Japanese ramen recipe isn’t just accessible because of the ingredients; the assembly also makes it beginner friendly. For more easy meals to fit into your meal plan, check out The Make-Ahead Cook by America’s Test Kitchen.

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Quick Japanese Soup with Sardines

Japanese soups are not just uniquely flavorful, but are also among some of the most nutritious.

This variety not only has cabbage – a soup staple worldwide – but adds sardines for protein. They’re also rich in omega-3 fatty acids, and like most varieties of fish, they contain no carbohydrates. So you can choose to add noodles or grains, but if not, you’re only getting carbs from the carrots, zucchini, and cabbage.

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Albacore Tuna Poke

East meets West Coast in this Japanese fish dish. Similar to ceviche, the high-quality fish is quickly “cooked” by being tossed with citrus.

Albacore tuna is cut into bite-sized pieces and put into a bowl with avocado cubes, jalapeno slices, and macadamia nuts. Whisk together orange juice, soy sauce, and sesame oil to drizzle over the top. Gently toss it all together, and serve with rice.

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Bento Chicken & Vegetables

It’s not hard to get your daily fill of veggies when the farmers’ market is full of fresh, local produce. But what about the winter months, when it seems like all the markets are closed?

That’s when you’ll want to keep a good supply of root vegetables on hand. These bento veggies are healthy and versatile, so you can eat them with plain rice or toss them into another recipe like tamagoyaki.

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Inari Sushi Recipe0

When it comes to sushi, Americans tend to think of just a few options like spicy tuna and clear adaptations like the California roll. But there are actually five basic kinds of sushi, and the sushi rolls most common outside of Japan are all of the maki variety.

Inari sushi is more like a fritter. The sushi rice is stuffed into a fried tofu pocket called aburaage (which you can either make or buy in Asian groceries) and then served with wasabi and soy sauce. It can also be topped with a quick mixture of canned tuna.

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Japanese Curry

Japanese curry is surprisingly similar to American  stew. It’s also cooked in a heavy-bottomed stockpot, but the seasonings are different. However, the seasonings make this stew even more flavorful.

It’s thickened with a curry-spiced roux, and the beef also simmers with star anise, bay leaf, and garam masala. Aside from that, you’ll still find a familiar bowl of potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, and tender stewed meat. The recipe uses chicken breast, but you could easily make this beef stew instead.

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Easy Japanese Pickled Vegetables

Making your own pickled veggies takes less time – and a lot less work – than you’d think. This recipe is similar to sunomono, the cucumber salad, but it involves much more vinegar. Plus, the veggies have to sit for a couple hours before you dig in, whereas you can eat cucumber salad immediately.

One more difference depends on whether or not you want the pickled veggies to have a bit of bite. If so, add some wasabi paste too.

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Tamagoyaki

The Japanese egg dish similar to omelettes is known as tamago. But after you have the basic Japanese omelette, there are other dishes you can make with it.

Tamago can be wrapped up with sushi rice and nori seaweed for an elegant presentation. Or make a kind of omelette roll, tamagoyaki, to be served as bento or an appetizer.

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Oyster Donburi

In restaurants, Japanese rice is usually plain, sticky, and often served on the side. The only choice is whether you want white or brown rice.

But in Japan, rice bowls come in countless varieties with additions like egg, shredded seaweed, and even oysters. This recipe starts like many oyster recipes, with a pot of boiling water. But they’re only blanched for 10 seconds before getting cooked in a saucepan.

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Japanese Curry Fried Rice

Japanese fried rice isn’t like the kind you order with Chinese take-out – but it’s pretty close.

There are still eggs and vegetables, and you can pick any kind of protein you like. This recipe is about the easiest stir fry there is, especially if you have leftover rice. It doesn’t even require soy sauce or other Asian condiments like mirin. All you need to season this one-pan dinner is a little curry powder and salt.

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Agedashi Tofu

Japanese tofu dishes come in all shapes and sizes, but one of the most beloved – and most enjoyable for the tofu wary – is this appetizer.

Of course any ingredient tastes great when it’s lightly coated in flour and deep fried to a crisp. Meanwhile the inside becomes creamy and soft, so the texture of tofu that’s off-putting for some won’t be a problem with this preparation.

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Stir-Fried Eggplant with Ginger & Miso

It doesn’t take much to transform eggplant into a tasty side dish or light lunch. Dried chilies infuse the oil with flavor, and miso and sake are combined to make a simple stir fry sauce.

Try to find Japanese eggplant – the long skinny kind – because they have a slightly softer texture than the large, dark purple variety. Or if it’s summer, look for the smaller sized fairy tale eggplant in farmers’ markets.

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Green Tea Dorayaki

Japanese matcha powder is a quick way to add the flavor of green tea to anything like pudding, protein shakes, and cookies.

For an authentic matcha dessert, make these dorayaki, like a pancake sandwich with jam in the middle. Forget that the filling is sweetened red beans, and just take a bite because this Japanese dessert will satisfy cravings you didn’t even know you had. Of course, you could use other fillings like creamy matcha icing.

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Manju (Japanese Pastries)

Lima bean pastries may not sound appetizing, and yet beans of various types are regularly used as filling for Asian desserts. Once you get over how weird it sounds, you’ll quickly learn to enjoy sweetened beans in desserts.

After all, peanuts are legumes, lima beans are legumes – what’s the harm in trying it out? Lima beans, AKA butter beans, are loaded with almost as much fiber as protein. They also have tons of micronutrients like molybdenum, which helps your body break down amino acids.

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Baked Tonkatsu Pork

Just like with American fried chicken, there are healthy alternatives to Japanese tonkatsu.

Instead of deep-frying the pork (or chicken), this recipe bakes the meat for 15 minutes. To ensure the coating is really crispy, it’s toasted in a frying pan before being used as breading. The included sauce is quick to make, but the tonkatsu pork will still taste awesome if all you have is barbecue sauce.

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