How to prepare frozen EDAMAME properly (vegan/vegetarian) 〜枝豆〜 | easy Japanese side dish recipe

Welcome to Taiji's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to prepare frozen edamame properly. For those who don't know what edamame is, they look like this. They're exactly the same vegetable as the soybeans, but they're premature soybeans. They're harvested before it's ripe, when it's still green. And the season for this is mid-summer to late summer. You would probably never find this fresh outside Japan. And also in Japan, outside of this season, you don't find this fresh either. So when you have a frozen edamame, you never want to boil this. When it's frozen, it's already boiled. And when you boil it again, one, it'll be overcooked, and two, it'll lose a lot of the flavor, it'll lose a lot of nutrients, and lose all the goodness in the water. So what you want to do is you want to slowly defrost this, and ideally in a fridge, so that the cells don't break and lose all the juice. So if you have time, you want to defrost this in the fridge. But if you don't have time, you can, of course, defrost this in a room temperature. Or if you're really in a hurry, you can defrost also in the microwave, but never in a boiling water. That's pretty much the way you want to prepare edamame. Then, see you next time. No, I'm not going to do that. Today, I'm going to show you two arranged variations on how you can kind of mix up the flavor of the edamame. One, I'm going to make a spicy version, and two, frying or roasting it to give it a little more like a smoky flavor to it. Then, let's get started. Here are the ingredients for an arranged recipe of spicy edamame. So I have regular edamame here, and it's got a little bit of frostbite, but it's not that big of a problem because it's only on the pot, and you only eat the inside. And for the spicy recipe, I'm going to use a couple cloves of garlic, a little sesame seeds, sesame oil, sugar, soy sauce, and salt we're going to use for the regular recipe. And today, I'm going to do a little bit of experiment and boil some of these to see if it's going to make any difference because I always defrost this outside or in the fridge, and I've never actually tried that. So this, I'm going to boil in water, and the rest, I'm going to let it defrost in the fridge. So it's going to take a little while. Let's go to three hours later. So this has been defrosted in room temperature for four hours now, and I'm going to break this up into three parts. So one, I'm just going to eat it regularly with salt. One, I'm going to make it spicy, and the other one, I'm going to roast it on a frying pan. So first, I'm going to prepare the garlic. I'm going to take the bottom part off, and then if you can peel it yourself, then it's great. If not, then just going to give it a little easy smash. Peels off very easily. So you can chop up the garlic as you normally would, but I'm very lazy, so I'm going to use whatever this is called, like a garlic masher. So just like that, because you just need very small pieces. I'm going to start roasting first, because it's going to take a longer time. I'm going to turn the heat to medium, and then here, just going to put in the edamame beans. Just going to give a little salt first, and then we're just going to roast it like this. Then in here, I'm going to make a spicy edamame. So I'm going to turn the heat to medium also, and then put in a little sesame oil. If you don't have sesame oil, then you can just use the regular frying oil. And then to that, I'm going to add in the garlic. Oh, I was a bit too early. And then here, once you start hearing the sizzling sound, you might want to kind of mix it up like this, and then roast it like this slowly. And then as we were talking, it's getting ready. So this is good. And then here, I'm going to put in the edamame right in, and then just kind of mix it up like this. And then here, I'm going to put in about a half a tablespoon of sugar, and to this, about a half to one tablespoon of soy sauce. And at the very end, I'm going to put in the chili pepper. I think I forgot to put this in the ingredients, but of course, if you don't like it spicy, then you can skip this as well. So just a tiny bit, depending on how much spice you want it. Well, it's looking really good. So this is finished. Just going to wait a little bit more to roast the edamame. So I forgot about the experiment that I was going to do. I'm going to bring this water to boil, and this I saved up on the side and left it on the freezer so we can do the experiment. Let's do that now. So this is I'm going to put in the frozen edamame in here. So I saw in some other YouTube video that they said that you should wait until the bean pods are floating on the surface. So we're going to wait until that. In the meantime, the roasted edamame is looking really great. I'm going to turn the heat off and then put it on a plate. It's looking great as well. So you see that the pods are floating on the surface. It's ready. I'm going to turn the heat off. I'm going to take that out and get a little salt. So we got three different kinds. Let's eat. Okay, let's eat. So I have here a different variation of edamame recipe. And with this, I have to have a beer for those who want to go to Japan. And when you get there, please go to izakaya. So izakaya is a type of restaurant. It's kind of like a bar maybe, but they serve a lot of different food and a lot of food that matches alcohol, especially beer. In Japan, we drink a lot of beer. And the first thing that most people order when they get to izakaya, so beer, and along with it, edamame. So the combination of edamame with beer is just great. So if you haven't tried that, please try it. Okay, let's open this up. Okay, let's try different edamame recipes. So I have here four recipes. One, I have edamame defrosted in the room temperature. Here, the edamame that I boiled in hot water. And then here, spicy edamame. And here, roasted edamame. I'm going to try the regular edamame. Oh, good. So good. It's good. So this is not like super cold, but it's room temperature. So if you like it warm, then you can also put this in a microwave. So I have here edamame boiled in water. It's not bad, but not bad, actually. So when I was in Japan, I was told never to boil the frozen edamame. And that's how most izakayas serve their edamame when it's not in season. Not bad, but I recommend this version better. Yeah, definitely. The flavor is a little more stronger. Just a tiny bit. So then let's try the roasted edamame. So it's got smoky flavor to it. So if you open inside, it's not really roasted. A little bit on the side. But I think because the pods are getting roasted, it adds like a smoky flavor to it. It's also good. So I think the smoky flavor of this brings out the sweetness of edamame. Really great stuff. And lastly, the spicy edamame. Oh, now the garlic. So edamame itself doesn't have a very strong flavor, but this garlic gives a great punch to it. It's great. Oh, it's great. So gotta have beer with edamame. Oh, just delicious. So like I said, combination of edamame with beer is just phenomenal. So as you can see, I'm eating with my hands. I don't think I've ever seen people eat edamame with a chopstick. You just kind of have to push it out like this and then eat. Except for the spicy edamame, the rest is pretty much just salt. So you don't get your fingers that dirty. Really good. That was really good. So edamame doesn't have like really strong flavor, but it's very subtle and very, very fine sweetness to it. And times like these where we have to stay home longer, I think cooking is a great hobby. So I hope my videos will help you to open up to some new ideas. If you like what you saw, please subscribe, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Bye!