If Japanese cuisine causes you any misgivings, today we give you ten steps to get closer to it naturally and so that you can have fun with it.
One of my greatest gastronomic discoveries when I turned twenty, I must confess, was Japanese food. Until then I viewed it with some suspicion and never decided to try it. In fact, I think it’s to blame for the fact that on one occasion I ate sushi that wasn’t good at all. A bad first experience that clouded my vision for quite some time.
Years later and thanks to a course on how to make sushi that I attended with some friends, I began to immerse myself in Japanese gastronomy. Soon I discovered that it is much more than sushi, and that its gastronomy has a lot to do with other aspects of its way of thinking, its culture… it is very rich, today we give you 10 keys to understand Japanese cuisine .
The first one had to be a very clear one. And Japanese cuisine is much, much more than sushi and any of its variants. It is true that it may have a predominant place in Western culture, but to understand its cuisine you have to immerse yourself in a culture with a sensitivity different from ours.
Japanese cuisine consists of a multitude of different ingredients. Cooking according to traditional Japanese thought should include around 32 different foods a day. That is why their food is distributed in such a peculiar way and has so many different things.
Japanese cuisine is also a formula for health. For the Japanese, eating to feel good is very important and everything will have to have the necessary relationship so that through food we can achieve good health.
The most important ingredient in practically all meals is rice. This is the core of Japanese culinary life, the main dish.
The food is presented and served in portions, it is placed on the plate in such a way that it has a reason. It is not only attractive but also fulfills the functionality of eating with chopsticks.
Japanese food is served on a multitude of different plates and bowls since they play an important place in the visual plane of the meal. In summer they are usually made of glass, enamelled because they give a feeling of freshness. In winter the enameled ones because they give a feeling of warmth.
One of the chef’s functions is to choose the tableware based on the type of recipe he is going to prepare since in this way the dish helps complete the meal.
The Japanese have three basic principles when it comes to eating and choosing tableware; they do so based on variety, seasons and presentation.
Japanese food is quite salty, but not because of the salt itself, but because of one of its main ingredients: soy sauce.
But also in Japan it is very common to use sugar in a savory dish. Another of its ingredients is mirim, which is sweet, this is used to provide balance. And perhaps for this reason they don’t have much need for desserts.