It amazes me how much money people spend on “gourmet” chili powders. They often come in some kind of kitschy packaging (like a burlap sack or a cowboy hat), with promises such as “Authentic!”, “World’s Best”, or “Award Winning!” emblazoned all over them. Inside the impressive packaging, you’re likely to find a decidedly unimpressive plastic baggie of spices that are long past their prime. Aside from being ridiculously overpriced these mixes have also probably been sitting on the shelf for months....

What is a Potage Potage (pronounced poh-tahj) was originally a medieval French soup made from vegetables cooked until they formed a thick porridge. With many people keeping small kitchen gardens at the time, it was made from whatever vegetables were ready to harvest. For this reason, to this day, small vegetable gardens are known as Potager. Though this hearty soup seems to have fallen out of favor in Europe, it’s found an unlikely home in Japan....

Why This Recipe Works? Most instant ramen noodles have been fried once to make them cook faster. This makes them rehydrate more quickly, and the porous texture makes them very good at soaking up seasonings. The dry seasoning packet that comes with instant ramen noodles provides a good base level of flavor, but you can spice them up with any dry spices or herbs you like. Once you’ve seasoned them, they can be deep fried or baked to crisp them up again....

Why This Recipe Works? It’s important not to overbeat the egg. This ensures it stays tender while preventing the Tamagoyaki from puffing up too much. Using a small amount of usukuchi soy sauce (light-colored soy sauce) and salt to season the Tamagoyaki preserves its golden yellow color while ensuring it’s properly seasoned. Cooking the Japanese omelette over medium-low heat prevents the egg from overcooking, ensuring it stays moist and tender. Types of Tamagoyaki If you’ve ever wondered why Tamagoyaki recipes vary so much, it’s because “tamagoyaki” is an umbrella term that includes several different egg dishes....

Whether you like them soft-boiled or hard boiled, this recipe explains all the factors involved in making perfectly boiled eggs for your setup. As a bonus, I’ve also tested several methods of making eggs easier to peel and have come up with the best method for peeling boiled eggs. If you’ve ever boiled an egg you’ve probably run into problems at one time or another. Two challenges generally arise: cooking the egg and peeling the egg....

The best part about this is that the flavor of the green tea lends itself well to going sweet or savory, depending on what you top it with. Why This Recipe Works? Using high-quality matcha ensures you get vibrant green color and all the health benefits of matcha. Adding the matcha at the end helps retain its vivid hue. Topping the matcha oatmeal with various textures and tastes keeps the oatmeal from getting boring....

You can use any protein, like beef, pork, or chicken, or even tofu or shrimp, to make Pad See Ew, but be sure to marinate it with some soy sauce and potato starch. The soy sauce seasons the protein while the starch helps hold in its juices, keeping it moist and tender. Because all the ingredients have different cooking times, it can be a bit tough to time everything right....

We had the first snow of the season today. It’s cold and dreary, but having this colorful tangle of savory-sweet yakisoba reminds me of a summertime festival in Japan; complete with fireworks, food stalls and people dressed in colorful yukatas. But after gorging myself over the holidays, it’s time to cut back the calories and I’ve come up with a delicious, satisfying version of the Japanese classic that has only 173 calories per serving, and almost no carbs....

Another common observation is that French food is heavy. I won’t lie to you, with three tablespoons of butter in it, Meunière is not a light sauce, however the bright flavors of the lemon let the browned butter work its wonders without feeling like you just ate two and half cubic inches of butter. Crispy around the edges, while moist and tender towards the center, the sauce balances the rich nutty flavors of the browned butter with the tart, sunny flavor of lemon....

Why this recipe works I usually fry chicken katsu at 340 degrees F (170C) for about 6-8 minutes, which results in a fully cooked (though still juicy) interior and crisp golden-brown exterior. For Katsudon, it’s best to fry it at about 355 degrees F (180C) for 4-5 minutes. This results in a slightly undercooked interior and medium-brown exterior. That’s not usually a good thing, but since we need to cook Katsudon a second time, you can prevent overcooking the meat by slightly undercooking it the first time....

Why This Recipe Works? By hand chopping half of the shrimp and pureeing the remaining shrimp into a paste, you get two textures of shrimp in every bite. Adding onions to the shrimp paste gives the shrimp a mild sweetness, a great contrast to the savory toast. The addition of ground pork adds some fat to the shrimp mixture, which keeps it moist even after being fried. Shallow frying the shrimp toasts in relatively hot oil and draining the bread-side on paper towels keeps the dish from getting greasy....

Why This Recipe Works? The balance of tangy and sweet tastes from the rice vinegar and honey is the perfect counterpoint to the nutty miso and spicy ginger. Miso naturally contains lecithin, which is the trick to making the dressing thick enough to evenly coat any vegetable in your salad. Although this is a salad dressing, it’s versatile enough for other dishes such as cold noodles, poached fish, or grilled chicken....

Why This Recipe Works? Soybeans are inherently sweet and creamy (why they make good plant-based milk), but when you roast them, caramelization and Maillard browning transform the flavor into something similar to peanuts or hazelnuts. Grinding the roasted soybeans into a fine powder makes it easy to use as a flavorful ingredient and a topping. You can adjust how nutty you want your kinako to be by how long you roast it....

As much as I struggled with my Asian identity growing up, I have very fond memories of visiting Japan as a kid. One of my favorite activities was going to summer festivals, or Matsuri, which always had rows of brightly colored stalls with games for kids, and even more stalls hawking food. It’s hard to say what my favorite stall food was, but I’ve always loved the sweet spicy aroma of yakisoba sizzling on a flat metal griddle....

Matsutake mushrooms are the embodiment of this fixation on seasonality with a primary season lasting just a few short weeks during fall. They have a bouncy, almost crunchy texture when cooked, and exude a clean earthy aroma reminiscent of cedar. Like porcini’s and truffles, Matsutake mushrooms are difficult to cultivate, which means the ones you buy in the store where most likely foraged by hand by someone. Combined with their relative rarity and high demand and you have yourself one pricey fungus....

I’ve gone on about how the appearance of Matsutake Mushrooms are the harbinger of autumn in Japan. But the season is fleeting, and their disappearance from store shelves spells the coming of winter ahead. Last week after the FoodBuzz Festival, I had the pleasure of wandering around the Mission district in San Francisco. After peering into Delfina Pizzeria like a stray dog, and indulging in three scoops of ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery, I was drawn into the Bi-Rite market across the street for a peek....

Indonesian cooking can be divided into prep steps and cooking steps. The first prep step is the preparation of the main ingredients (be it noodles, seafood, rice, poultry). The second step is the grinding of spices (most commonly used is garlic, shallots, chilies, spices and seasonings). Cooking steps include the stir-frying of the spice paste and finally, the addition of the main ingredients. It is not that complicated, though it does taste slightly complicated and looks like a lot of work!...

I’ve got a few tricks to make these taste like the ones you get in a ramen shop, so keep reading for my ramen egg recipe, and check out the video to see my technique for making soft-boiled eggs easier to peel. Why This Recipe Works? Putting a small crack in each egg before boiling them makes even fresh eggs easier to peel. Bringing the eggs to a boil and cutting the heat cooks them more slowly, making the timing to get a perfect soft-boiled egg more forgiving, giving you a soft jammy center by eliminating the temperature gradient problem where the outside of the yolk is over-cooked, and the center is still almost raw....

Growing up, a steaming bowl of ramen was my panacea to mend a cold, the balm demanded to sooth my angst, and the pick-me-up needed after a rough day at school. Those perfect bowls of creamy porcine soup brimming with curly noodles were, for me, the quintessential comfort food. This is probably why I took it with such great offense when hipster New York ramen joints started offering meatless abominations on their menus....