I make my Hayashi rice recipe from scratch, building layers of flavors by browning the meat, mushrooms, and vegetables and balancing their savory umami with the tartness of red wine and tomatoes, along with a hint of sweetness from some honey. Why This Recipe Works? By browning the mushrooms, beef, and onions in the same pot, you build up layers of caramelized fond. This gives the Hayashi Rice roux the umami-packed flavor of demi-glace sauce without actually having to make a demi-glace....

Onion Anatomy 101 Before I show you the ultimate onion chopping technique let’s get on the same page about an onions anatomy and some basic terminology. Onions are essentially a layered sphere with a root end and a top end. When you cut an onion in half, it exposes the layers, and you can see the core in the center. How to Prep an Onion When you want to chop an onion, the first thing you have to do is to prep it....

Although it isn’t a traditional Japanese dish, Japanese Curry, or Kare Raisu, has become a home cooking staple here since its introduction about 150 years ago. One popular brand is labeled “Vermont Curry.” Its rich, savory, and spicy tastes are balanced by a mild sweetness that makes it a favorite among kids and adults alike, and it has spawned an entire sub-genre of popular dishes and snacks seasoned with Japanese curry powder....

Why This Recipe Works? Selecting and cutting the cucumber to the right size is critical to get a perfectly shaped sushi roll. Using the proper sushi rolling technique ensures your rolls close properly with the filling in the center. Adding seasonings such as toasted sesame, umeboshi, and shio konbu gives the cucumber rolls more flavor. Ingredients Sushi Rice - Sushi rice is cooked Japanese short-grain rice seasoned with sushi vinegar. This is the most important component of sushi, and making good sushi rice sets apart the best sushi restaurants in Japan from the mediocre ones....

Hollandaise sauce is a magical emulsion that breaks the rule that oil and water don’t mix. This is made possible by the fact that both butter and egg yolks contain emulsifiers. Emulsifiers such as milk proteins(butter) and lecithin (egg yolks) are molecules where one end is attracted to oil, and the other end is drawn to water. They’re like a mutual friend that bridges the gap between two enemies allowing them to intermingle....

It’s a great way to preserve fresh ginger, though, and I’ve found it makes for a delicious condiment that can be added to anything from stir-fries to soups, and it also makes for a delicious topping for hotdogs. Why This Recipe Works? Young ginger is more tender and less potent than fully matured ginger, which is why it’s usually used for making Gari. Boiling the ginger after slicing it tames the heat of the ginger to a comfortable level....

A number of years ago, I ran off to Montréal over Thanksgiving. My family was’t too happy about this, but I ended up being equally disappointed because I found myself in a place that had celebrated Thanksgiving a month earlier. You see, I am a gravy fiend and will literally drink the stuff right out of the gravy boat when nobody’s looking. With mashed potatoes, it’s a perfect meal, and the thought of missing this had me a little heart broken… That is, until I discovered Poutine!...

My method involves making a mixture of mentaiko and olive oil and then emulsifying this with butter and the starchy boiling liquid from the pasta. This creates a rich, velvety sauce with the full flavor of the mentaiko and olive oil that doesn’t get cloying or heavy. Why This Recipe Works? Cream mutes the flavor and spiciness of the mentaiko. By omitting it and making the sauce with mentaiko, olive oil, and starchy pasta water, you get a clean, briny sauce highlighting the simple ingredients’ flavors....

Although there are many origin stories, Pasta Carbonara is most likely a descendant of Pasta alla Gricia, which is made similarly, minus the eggs. Since the name is derived from the Italian word for “charcoal burner” one theory posits that the dish was first created for blue-collar workers working with charcoal. Whatever its origin, the name Carbonara didn’t appear in print until about 70 years ago, which makes this a relatively modern dish by Italian standards....

Cobbler vs Crisp vs Crumble There seems to be a bit of confusion about all the starch topped fruit desserts out there so I thought I’d take a minute to help clear things up. Cobbler - Unlike ice cream which most people can agree on a definition for, “cobbler” is a contentious patchwork of regional styles. These can broadly be divided into the batter camp and the dough camp. On the batter side, you can further subdivide into types of batter such as yellow cake, cornbread, and pancake, while the dough side can be broken up into groups like dumpling, pie, and biscuit....

While every household has their own way of preparing kinpira gobo, I like to start mine off by frying some finely chopped skin-on chicken thigh to render out some fat. This becomes the fat used to saute the burdock giving it a wonderful flavor. While it may be tempting to use skinless chicken or even breasts, don’t do it! The chicken is there for two reasons, to add fat to saute the burdock, and to add flavor....

Panna Cotta - Custard or Gelatin? Although Panna Cotta is generally set with gelatin, it’s always struck me as odd that despite the name implying that the dessert is cooked, it’s not (the cream is just heated to melt the gelatin). A few weeks ago, I had a delightful lunch cooked by a chef trained in Northern Italy. He insisted the proper way to make Panna Cotta was without gelatin, and it was indeed the best version of this decadent dessert I’ve ever had....

Written in Chinese, the word Wonton (雲吞), literally means “to swallow clouds”, a reference to the billowing cloud-like wrapper of a Wonton (particularly when they’re boiled). This is why Wontons typically have a lot less filling that other dumplings such as Shaomai and Jiaozi, because you are meant to enjoy the wrapper more than the filling. Nobody likes a soggy Fried Wonton, and there’s a great trick to getting the wrapper ultra crisp....

Miso Soup Ingredients Dashi I see a lot of recipes for Miso Soup out there using water as the base. This is like making chicken soup with just water and salt without the chicken. Dashi is a defining component of miso soup, and along with miso and water, it’s the only other required ingredient. You can read all about how to make dashi here, but it’s traditionally made with a combination of kombu (kelp) and some kind of dried fish (such as katsuobushi, niboshi, or yakiago)....

Still, there were the occasional splurges where we’d order a pizza or take-out “Chinese” food. I always looked forward to these evenings, not because my mom’s food was bad, but because they seemed like windows into distant cultures that I didn’t have at home. As it turned out, they were windows into other food cultures, just not the ones I thought I was peering into. My two favorite dishes from our local greasy wok were Mongolian Beef and Singapore Noodles....

Why This Recipe Works? Making Onsen Tamago involves cooking the egg to a specific temperature (145° F or 63° C). I’ve detailed 3 methods you can use to achieve this. For the first method, you only need a pot and some measuring cups, but this method is the trickiest to get right. The second method uses the warming function of most modern rice cookers. The third method is the most reliable but requires a thermal circulator....

This also makes it easy to eat with your hands, which is why it’s often a popular choice for get-togethers here in Japan, so each person can roll whatever they want into their sushi. You can set out a spread of colorful proteins like sashimi grade fish, sea urchin, hamachi, imitation crab, or sweet shrimp, and vegetables like sprouts, shiso, and avocado. Toppings like sesame seeds, kewpie mayo, and wasabi are popular options....

Although I admire people who can adhere to a strictly vegan lifestyle, it’s not realistic to get everyone to change their eating habits overnight. I’ve long believed that the way to get people to follow a more plant-based diet is to make vegan food materially better than the conventional alternative. By better, I don’t mean esoteric ideas like being kinder to the world around us or being healthier, but better in an immediately apparent way such as better taste or easier preparation....

Still clinging to the last vestiges of spring and the unusually cool weather we’ve been having, I wanted to break out my pressure cooker for one last hurrah before summer fully sets in. This dish comes from a country where the average temperature rarely falls below 80 degrees, making Bulalo a filling stew that’s deceptively light. Perfect, even in warmer weather. Native to the Southern Luzon region of the Philippines, Bulalo is a light colored soup that’s made rich by cooking beef shanks and beef marrow bones for hours, until much of the collagen and fat has melted into the clear broth....