Cuisine · Japan

Japanese cooking

Rice, dashi, restraint. Every flavor earns its place. Ramen with honest broth, vegetables cooked like they matter, fish treated with reverence.

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Japanese Cheesecake (Cotton Soufflé Cheesecake) with cream cheese, eggs and caster sugar — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanAdvanced

Sweet Dishes

Japanese Cheesecake (Cotton Soufflé Cheesecake)

A cloud-light hybrid of cheesecake and soufflé: cream cheese melted into a smooth batter, egg whites whipped to soft peaks and folded in, baked in a water bath at low temperature. The result jiggles when you shake the tin. Not sweet in the American sense — lightly tangy from cream cheese with a breath of lemon. First created at the Plaza Hotel in Osaka. Best warm from the oven for the jiggle, or chilled overnight when it becomes denser and creamier.

100 min260 kcal8 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Japanese Curry Rice with beef, potato and carrot — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanAdvanced

Meat Dishes

Japanese Curry Rice

Japan's most beloved comfort food — tender beef, potato, carrot, and onion slow-braised in a rich, mildly sweet curry sauce thickened with a flour roux. Milder and silkier than Indian or Thai curry, served over steamed rice or udon noodles. Japanese curry arrived from India via Britain in the 19th century and was completely reimagined.

90 min400 kcal4 serves

💪High protein

Japanese Souffle Pancakes with eggs, flour and milk — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Breakfast and Brunch

Japanese Souffle Pancakes

Japanese souffle pancakes (スフレパンケーキ, sometimes sold as fluffy or jiggly pancakes) are the tall, wobbly pancakes of Japanese cafés, made from eggs, a little flour and milk, and lifted mostly by whipped egg-white meringue. I'll be honest: they're finicky, and the first batch you make will probably be a bit lopsided. They rise so high because the batter is really a meringue with a small amount of yolk batter folded through, cooked low and slow under a lid with a splash of water for steam. Get the meringue right and everything else follows.

35 min320 kcal2 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Kabocha no Nimono (Japanese Simmered Kabocha Squash) with pumpkin, dashi and soy sauce — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanEasy

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Kabocha no Nimono (Japanese Simmered Kabocha Squash)

Kabocha no nimono (かぼちゃの煮物, simmered kabocha, also called Japanese simmered pumpkin) is a Japanese home dish of kabocha chunks simmered in dashi with sugar, mirin, sake and soy sauce until soft, with part of the skin left on. Kabocha is the Japanese name for the green-skinned winter squash with sweet, floury flesh that Western shops sometimes label Japanese pumpkin. You pack the pieces skin-side down in one layer and simmer them under a drop lid for about 15 minutes in very little liquid. Hands-on time is about 30 minutes, and the pan then needs 15 to 20 minutes off the heat, which is when the pumpkin actually takes up the seasoning. Serves four as a side with rice, grilled fish and miso soup.

30 min140 kcal4 serves

⚡Quick

Katsudon (Japanese Pork Cutlet Rice Bowl) with pork, eggs and panko — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Katsudon (Japanese Pork Cutlet Rice Bowl)

Katsudon is a Japanese rice bowl (donburi) topped with tonkatsu, a breaded fried pork cutlet that's simmered briefly in sweet dashi broth with onion and set with egg. The name joins katsu, the cutlet, and donburi, the bowl. You slice the cutlet, give it about a minute in a small pan of broth, pour the egg over and slide the lot onto rice. Part of the crust stays crunchy and part goes silky where the broth reaches it, and that contrast is the whole appeal. Japanese students eat it before exams and athletes before a match, because katsu sounds like the verb "to win."

40 min780 kcal2 serves

💪High protein

Kinoko Takikomi Gohan (Japanese Mushroom Rice) with short grain rice, mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Kinoko Takikomi Gohan (Japanese Mushroom Rice)

Kinoko takikomi gohan (きのこの炊き込みご飯), also written kinoko gohan and simply called Japanese mushroom rice, is short-grain rice cooked together with mushrooms and fried tofu in dashi, soy sauce, mirin and sake, so the seasoned broth goes into the grains instead of being poured on top. Takikomi gohan is the general name for rice cooked with other ingredients, and this is the mushroom version, usually made with shimeji, maitake and shiitake. The mushrooms sit on top of the rice and are not stirred in until the pot is done, which keeps the grains evenly tender. Active time covers prep and cooking; add 30 minutes for soaking the rice and 10 minutes of steaming off the heat. It feeds four as a main with miso soup and pickles, and what is left makes good onigiri the next day.

45 min340 kcal4 serves

Kuri Gohan (Japanese Chestnut Rice) with chestnuts, glutinous rice and short grain rice — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Kuri Gohan (Japanese Chestnut Rice)

Kuri gohan (栗ご飯) is a Japanese rice dish cooked with fresh chestnuts, made in home kitchens from September through October when kuri come into season. The name is just chestnut plus gohan, cooked rice; a version with more glutinous rice is sometimes called kuri okowa, and some families call the whole dish kurimeshi. Sake and salt do the seasoning instead of soy sauce, and a small share of mochigome mixed into the short-grain rice keeps the grains glossy and slightly chewy once they cool, so the chestnut's sweetness stays in front. The chestnuts steam directly on top of the rice and come out soft enough to break with chopsticks, closer in texture to a baked sweet potato than a raw nut. Active time here covers peeling and finishing the rice; the chestnuts need at least 20 minutes soaking before you can peel them and the rice needs another 30 minutes to soak before cooking, so budget closer to 90 minutes start to finish. Serves four alongside grilled fish, pickles and a bowl of miso soup.

50 min380 kcal4 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free

Matcha Latte with ceremonial grade matcha powder and whole milk or oat milk — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanEasy

Beverages

Matcha Latte

Ground shade-grown green tea whisked into a paste with hot water, then brought together with steamed milk. The result is grassy, vegetal and slightly sweet all at once — nothing like green tea-flavored syrup. Made properly at home with ceremonial-grade matcha, it's a genuinely different drink.

10 min130 kcal1 serves

⚡Quick🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free

Mellow Teriyaki Fish with fish, sake and soy sauce — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Fish and Seafood Dishes

Mellow Teriyaki Fish

White fish fillets glazed with a homemade teriyaki sauce that caramelizes under high heat into a sticky, sweet-savory coating. The sauce reduces to a glossy lacquer while the fish stays flaky and moist inside.

23 min275 kcal4 serves

⚡Quick💪High protein

Mille-Feuille Nabe (Japanese Cabbage and Pork Hot Pot) with napa cabbage, pork belly and dashi — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Soups

Mille-Feuille Nabe (Japanese Cabbage and Pork Hot Pot)

Mille-feuille nabe borrows its name from the French pastry of a thousand leaves, but here the layers are napa cabbage and paper-thin pork belly, packed upright into a pot so the cut edges spiral outwards like a flower. A clear dashi broth is poured over and everything simmers for twenty minutes until the cabbage collapses into sweetness and the pork melts. It looks like far more work than it is, and the leftover broth makes the best bowl of udon you'll have all winter.

45 min450 kcal4 serves

💪High protein

Miso Soup with miso paste, tofu and seaweed — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanEasy

Soups

Miso Soup

The soul of Japanese daily cooking: a light umami-rich broth of dashi and miso with silken tofu, wakame seaweed, and scallion. Ready in 15 minutes with just 6 ingredients. The one rule: never boil miso — it kills the living enzymes and dulls the flavor.

15 min90 kcal2 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

Mochi with glutinous rice flour and sugar — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanEasy

Sweet Dishes

Mochi

Mochi is a traditional Japanese dessert with a unique, delicate texture made from glutinous rice, filled with fresh fruit — the taste varies with the filling but the exquisite chewy texture is always recognizable.

30 min85 kcal10 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick🌱Vegan

Nearby flavors

Four kitchens with overlapping ingredients and similar rhythms to Japanese cooking.

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