Ingredient

Sake Recipes

14 recipes with sake for weeknights, meal prep, and quick ingredient searches. Choose by time, cuisine, and what is in your kitchen.

14 recipes

Ramen with bamboo shoots, carrot and chicken — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanAdvanced

Soups

Ramen

Ramen is a traditional Japanese dish consisting of Chinese noodles served in a hot broth with various toppings. Each region of Japan has its own unique recipes.

310 min550 kcal4 serves

💪High protein

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

Teriyaki Sauce with soy sauce, mirin and sake — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanEasy

Sauces and Dips

Teriyaki Sauce

A glossy, deeply savory-sweet glaze built from soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar, thickened with a cornstarch slurry until it coats a spoon. Homemade teriyaki takes ten minutes and tastes nothing like the bottled kind — the fresh garlic and ginger give it a brightness that disappears completely in shelf-stable versions. I keep a jar in the fridge and use it on everything from grilled chicken to roasted vegetables.

10 min60 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick

Udon Noodle Soup (Kake Udon) with udon noodles, dashi and soy sauce — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Udon Noodle Soup (Kake Udon)

Kake udon (かけうどん) is the plainest bowl of Japanese udon noodle soup: thick, chewy wheat noodles in a clear golden dashi broth seasoned with soy sauce and mirin, topped with spring onion and little else. The broth is nearly colourless but deep in umami, lightly sweet from the mirin. Udon is a specialty of the Kagawa region (Sanuki udon) and is eaten everywhere in Japan; the Kansai version uses a lighter broth, the Kanto version a darker, more assertive soy, and this recipe follows Kansai. The 20 minutes is hands-on time with dashi packets or powder; homemade dashi adds 20 to 30 minutes of passive kombu soaking. Make the broth right and the noodles take care of themselves.

20 min380 kcal2 serves

⚡Quick

Yakitori (Japanese Grilled Chicken Skewers) with chicken thighs, soy sauce and mirin — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Meat Dishes

Yakitori (Japanese Grilled Chicken Skewers)

Yakitori (焼き鳥, yaki = grilled, tori = bird) is one of Japan's most beloved street foods and izakaya staples — bite-sized pieces of chicken threaded onto bamboo or metal skewers and grilled over charcoal, seasoned with either coarse salt (shio style) or brushed repeatedly with tare, a soy-mirin-sake glaze that caramelizes into a lacquered, sweet-savory coating. Authentic yakitori is cooked over binchotan (白炭), a white oak charcoal that burns at very high temperature with minimal smoke, allowing the fat dripping from the chicken to produce fragrant vapour rather than flare-ups. The two defining skewer styles covered here are negima (ねぎま) — chicken thigh alternated with long onion — and the plain momo (もも) thigh skewer. Both are grilled in multiple passes, dipped in tare, returned to the grill, and repeated until the exterior is lacquered dark and the interior is cooked through.

60 min310 kcal4 serves

💪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

Chicken Karaage with chicken, soy sauce and ginger — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Meat Dishes

Chicken Karaage

Japan's much-loved fried chicken: bite-sized thigh pieces marinated in soy, ginger, garlic, and sake, dredged in potato starch, and double-fried to a pale, craggy, glass-crisp shell. The potato starch and the two-stage fry are what set it apart from any other fried chicken, and a squeeze of lemon at the table is all it needs.

35 min380 kcal4 serves

💪High protein

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

Oyakodon (Japanese Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl) with chicken, eggs and dashi — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Oyakodon (Japanese Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl)

Oyakodon is a Japanese rice bowl (donburi) of chicken and onion simmered in sweet-savoury dashi broth, finished with softly set egg and served over rice. The name means "parent and child": chicken and egg in one bowl, which is either charming or a little dark depending on your mood. It's the easiest donburi to get right at home, and the one I make when there's nothing in the fridge but chicken thighs, eggs and rice. The egg goes in at the very end and sets into soft, barely cooked curds, and the whole thing takes about fifteen minutes.

20 min550 kcal2 serves

⚡Quick💪High protein

Gyudon (Japanese Beef Rice Bowl) with beef, onion and dashi — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Gyudon (Japanese Beef Rice Bowl)

Gyudon (gyūdon, 牛丼, literally "beef bowl") is a Japanese rice bowl of thinly sliced beef and onion simmered in a sweet-savoury broth of dashi, soy sauce, mirin and a little sake. It's the dish fast-food chains like Yoshinoya built their business on, and it's just as good made at home. The onion goes in first until soft, the beef follows for a couple of minutes, then the whole lot goes over hot rice. The only thing that really matters is the beef: it has to be sliced almost transparently thin, which is why the freezer is your friend here.

20 min620 kcal2 serves

⚡Quick💪High protein

Ajitama (Japanese Ramen Eggs) with eggs, soy sauce and mirin — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanEasy

Appetizers and Sandwiches

Ajitama (Japanese Ramen Eggs)

Ajitama, short for ajitsuke tamago (味玉, 味付け玉子) and also called nitamago or simply ramen eggs, are Japanese soft-boiled eggs marinated in soy sauce and mirin until the whites turn light brown and savoury-sweet while the yolks stay jammy. In Japan they are the standard topping on a bowl of ramen. The eggs boil for 6 minutes 30 seconds, go straight into ice water, then get peeled and left in a cold marinade of soy sauce, mirin, water and a splash of sake. Hands-on work takes about 20 minutes. After that the eggs sit in the fridge for 4 to 12 hours and the marinade does the rest.

20 min90 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick

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

Ingredients

Goes well with

Other ingredients that appear most often alongside sake across the archive. Pick one to drill deeper.

soy sauce dashi mirin eggs chicken onion ginger pork short-grain rice carrot garlic cornstarch