I’ve been addicted to eating at Japanese restaurants lately, so I decided it was time to take it into my own hands! Looking into recipes for a while and made a list of what I wanted to start with. Got the ingredients to make: miso soup, Zaru soba, onigiri, and of course Raman lol
Came out to $135, had to get a few snacks too lol. Frozen fish cake not pictured
Any suggestions for what other ingredients I should buy, or other things I can make with the ingredients I purchased?
(First post here! Sorry if this type of post is not allowed)
by thanous-m
12 Comments
I know not every ingredient is Japanese but it was a Korean grocery store, I tried my best🤣
Is this American currency? You are paying way too much for rice. Sushi rice is calrose rice. It’s a short grain rice and you can get big bags of it for what you paid.
Read up on some Japanese cook books as to get a better idea of what are the main staples in Japanese cooking first.
Did you plan out meals or just buy stuff you thought you might need?
Just as a tip- buy 5kg rice packs or more from Amazon. I haven’t found anything cheaper and the Asian markets there are quite good. The rice price is ridiculous for so little rice. That won’t last you long.
Looks great for a starter shop!!! A couple of things I don’t see (maybe I just missed it) that you might want to add are curry roux blocks and some frozen udon. They’ll give you more options on days when you want a quick meal.
I see you bought mirin, rice vinegar, dashi, cooking sake, miso, and soy sauce… those are all smart buys! you’ll use those a lot with Japanese recipes. hondashi and mentsuyu noodle soup base are also nice for convenience. I also like to have a light usukuchi soy sauce for tomagoyaki. best of luck!
For convenience sake I would never recommend buying thick cut katsuobushi(bonito) that is used to make dashi. I would buy both Shirodashi (yamaki kappo brand) and Hondashi (Ajinomoto brand) to quickly flavor soups and to make sauces.
Then instead of shitake dashi powder, I would just buy the actual dried shitake because after extracting dashi from them, you can immediately put the rehydrated shitake into your dishes.
Also to create some of the yoshoku dishes, I would recommend Worcestershire sauce (bulldog brand) and if you don’t have it already, ketchup (kagome brand).
Another sauce that will help shortcut is just to buy premade mentsuyu.
I don’t see any ume or furikake.
No Sambal Olek? Ponzu? Fish sauce? Miso paste? Kimchi? Bonito flake? Toasted sesame seed? Yuzu? Hoisin sauce? Wonton wraps? I’m kidding but maybe I’m not. 😂 Good haul non the less OP!
Pretty decent haul.
Not sure about the rice tho.
I have the luxury of being able to buy japanese rice that is not marketed towards westerners, but to japanese people living abroad, meaning that it’s quite good.
So if you have the option, buy a japanese rice brand next time.
The best thing I ever did to jump start cooking Japanese food was buy [a large quantity of kombu](https://anything-from-japan.com/premium-hidaka-kombu-for-professional-use) and katsuobushi in bulk, [and make a large quantity of dashi to freeze](https://www.reddit.com/r/JapaneseFood/comments/1efmfdz/what_14_quarts_of_dashi_looks_like/). I have it frozen in different sized containers, including ice cube trays, which I re-fill periodically. The ice cube sized portions are perfect for something like tamagoyaki, where you don’t really need that much. It makes it so much easier to prepare something like miso soup or nikujaga, since you don’t need to steep kombu for hours to prepare; all you have to do is thaw out the dashi and start from there.