Cooking Recipe
Pick Up Stories

Nakami Soup (Pork Guts Soup) [Cooking Recipe]
“Nakami” means guts or giblets of a pig, and “jiru (shiru)” means soup. This soup is very common in Okinawa and is offered at special cerebr...Read More

Marinated Urizun Beans (Okinawan Beans) [Cooking Recipe]
Ingredients ・1 pack of Urizun beans ・1 tbs Ume paste ・3g Bonito flakes How to cook 1. Wash the Urizun beans. 2. Boil water in a pot a...Read More

Handama Salad (Serving size 4) [Cooking Recipe]
Ingredients ・2 bunchs of Handama (An Okinawan local vegetable with purple & green leaves) ・2 leaves of regular lettuce ・20g Baby leaf l...Read More

Asa Chinsuko [Cooking Recipe]
Ingredients (for 20 chinsukos) ・2 g dried asa ・70 g soft flour ・30 g sugar ・30 g salad oil Directions Soak and wash asa and then dry on a paper towel. Mix soft flour and sugar in a...

Asa chicken nuggets [Cooking Recipe]
Ingredients (for 4 people) ・5g dry asa seaweed ・200g ground chicken ・1/2 block of silken tofu ・1tbs starch ・1tbs chicken stock powder ・salt to taste Directions Soak a...

Asa soup stock rolled omelet [Cooking Recipe]
Ingredients (for two people) ・3g dry asa ・3 eggs ・1tbs white soy sauce soup stock (shirodashi) ・salt to taste Soak asa in water about 10 minutes and wash. Mix ...

Asa Soup [Cooking Recipe]
Asa seaweed, known as sea lettuce, is usually harvested from January to March, when it washes up on the shores of Okinawa, where people collect it using a strainer. The most popula...

Island Carrot Potage [Cooking Recipe]
Corn softens the odor of carrot, making the soup easy to eat even for people who don’t like carrots. Ingredients (for 4 people) 2 Island Carrots 1 Canned corn ½ onion 400cc w...

Sauteed island carrots and spinach [Cooking Recipe]
Canned ingredients are used frequently in Okinawan cooking, such as canned pork, tuna and mackerel. Oil in canned tuna is used as cooking oil for frying. Ingredients 1 Shimaninjin ...

Steamed ‘shimaninjin’ bread baked using rice-cooker [Cooking Recipe]
This bread is very easy to make with a rice-cooker. I didn’t use sugar so it’s not sweet. You can add sugar if you want sweet bread, or add on honey when you eat. You ...

Chimushinji – Okinawan pork and vegetable soup [Cooking Recipe]
Okinawan people eat “Chimushinji” when they have a cold or fell otherwise sick. Ingredients in this dish include pork that contains proteins, fresh Okinawan vegetables, and herbs w...

Madara no nitsuke – Simmered cod in sweet soy sauce [Cooking Recipe]
For my English husband, if we have cod, he might say we should have ‘fish and chips’ but my choice would be nitsuke. I like fish and chips but I must say this is a much healthier o...

Anko Dango – Red bean paste with rice cake [Cooking Recipe]
I love Japanese deserts made with rice cake. I also love making them because they are so easy to make. This time my two-year-old daughter helped me making balls and we had a really...

Kuubuirichi – Braised kelp and pork [Cooking Recipe]
In Japanese and Okinawan cooking, kelp is a very important ingredient. This is because we use it to make dashi (broth) and also in many different dishes. In the far north of Japan,...

Daikon to toriniku-no nimono – Braised daikon radish and chicken [Cooking Recipe]
Happy New Year everyone! I hope everybody had a great Christmas and New Year accompanied with great food. After New Year, I always find I ate too much and fancy light dishes, so th...

Zōni – Broth with rice cake for New Year [Cooking Recipe]
Zōni is a soup Japanese people eat at New Year. The main thing in the soup is mochi, rice cake, and typically it also includes vegetables such as daikon radish, shiitake mushrooms ...

Gurukuma no Nanban-zuke – Marinated Indian mackerel, Nanban-style [Cooking Recipe]
I went to Toya port in Yomitan the other day and bought a few Indian mackerels. There are so many ways to cook fish but Nanban-style is one of my favorites. This time I used Guruku...

Maguro to Daikon no Nimono – Braised tuna and daikon radish [Cooking Recipe]
Nimono is one of the most popular daily dishes among Japanese people. “Nimono” means “braised something”. It could be vegetables, fish, meat or a combination of them. The reason ni...

Nakami jiru – clear pork gut soup [Cooking Recipe]
“Nakami” means guts or giblets of pig, and “jiru (shiru)” means soup. This soup is very common in Okinawa but I wasn’t sure if this soup is something Japan ...

Kabocha no Nimono – Braised pumpkin with sweet soy sauce [Cooking Recipe]
This recipe is ridiculously easy, and first I thought, ‘No, this is too easy for this column.’ But I realized this kind of dish could be a really good entry dish for those starting...

Kinoko gohan – Steamed rice with chicken and mushrooms [Cooking Recipe]
Although you can purchase mushrooms throughout the year, the actual season for mushrooms is autumn. Japanese cuisine places a strong emphasis on the seasonality of ingredien...

Gyu-don – Sweet and salty beef with rice [Cooking Recipe]
In Japan, there are a lot of donburi dishes. Donburi means a bowl of rice with food on top. Popular and famous ones are oyako-don (eggs and chicken), ten-don (tempura on top...

Misomayo salada – Miso paste and mayonnaise salad dressing [Cooking Recipe]
Do you think miso paste is just to make miso soup? You can use miso paste for many different dishes and this is one example. If you like Japanese goma (sesame) dressing, you might ...