Easy Japanese side dish: KIMPIRA (vegan/vegetarian) 〜きんぴら〜 | easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taiji's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make kimpira with carrots and daikon radish. Kimpira is a very typical side dish in Japan and most of the time it's made with burdock or gobo in Japanese. For those who don't know, burdock is a very long, thin, fibery, brown color root vegetable. I don't know how easy that is to find it near you but I don't see it quite often in Germany. You can of course make this with other vegetables and today I'm going to make it with carrots and daikon radish. You can of course use other vegetables like zucchini, eggplant, like different beans or asparagus or paprika. You can be very creative with this. You can make this strictly vegan and it's very easy and it's very delicious. Then let's get started. Here are the ingredients for kimpira. So actually you can make this recipe with any root vegetable. Today we're going to use regular carrots and white radish or daikon radish but you can of course make it just with carrot or just with daikon. Then for the seasoning I have sugar and soy sauce. As you can see this is exactly the same mixture as teriyaki sauce. This is a common seasoning for Japanese cuisine. And then I also have sake. This is a Japanese rice wine but if you don't have sake it's not a big problem. It just gives a little more depth to the flavor but if you don't have it then you can just use same amount of water. Then I have here sesame oil for frying but you can just use regular oil. Not a problem. Just to make it a little more flavorful I have here sesame seeds. You don't have to have this but it just kind of gives another layer to the taste. And then I also have a little bit of chili. If you don't like it spicy then you don't want to put it in. So first I'm going to grind the sesame seeds. So if you don't have a grinder like this you can just use it as it is but I like to grind it so you can enjoy more of the flavor of the sesame. So this should be enough. Then let's cut up the ingredients. I'm gonna just take the top part and the bottom part off and if you see a little bit of part that's kind of damaged you might want to take that part off. And then I'm just gonna make little strips with these carrots. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna first kind of cut this diagonally like this. Then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kind of lay it flat like this. I'm gonna cut up like this and then at the end I'll have a very evenly cut up strips of carrots. So as you see I have these strips. Then next I'm gonna cut up the daikon radish. So I want to have about the same amount. I'm gonna use like about a quarter to a third. And for this I'm just gonna cut in slices like this way and then I'm gonna cut in this so that I'll have about the same size strip. Then I'm gonna do the same thing I'm just gonna lay it flat like this. Then I can start cutting from this side like the same way as I did with the carrots. So I have about the same size strip as the carrots. So let's start cooking. I'm gonna turn the heat to high and then here I'm gonna put in a little bit of sesame oil. I'd say about a teaspoon or so. Then we're gonna wait till the pan is heated. I like to use these kind of regular pots for this recipe instead of frying pan because with a frying pan it kind of shoots out but with this kind of pot then everything just stays inside here. Once the pan is heated I'm gonna put in both the ingredients. I'm gonna lightly fry this. Once you see that it's kind of steaming then I'm gonna turn the heat to medium and then we're gonna be mixing like this for about two to three minutes until the carrots and the daikon radish will be cooked through. As you start to see that the ingredients getting soft like this we're gonna put in the seasoning. So we're gonna first put in the sugar, one tablespoon of sugar and then one tablespoon of sake. And like I say if you don't have sake you can just use the same amount of water. We're gonna wait until the liquid kind of vaporize. So as you see that there's only a little bit of liquid then I'm gonna put in the soy sauce, one tablespoon of soy sauce. Then we're gonna turn the heat to high and let the liquid vaporize. So this is actually pretty much finished. We can stop here and just serve like this but I like it a little spicy so I'm gonna put in about a teaspoon of chili pepper and at the very very end I'm gonna put in the ground up sesame seeds. Just the very end otherwise you lose the aroma. So this is looking really good. This is finished. I'm gonna turn the heat off. I'm gonna serve it on a plate. So with this kind of dish it's pretty much common in Japan to put in a little smaller bowl like this not on a plate. Maybe a little pinch of extra sesame to garnish it. This is finished. Let's eat. Okay let's eat. Itadakimasu. Smells good. Let's give it a try. This is really good. So this kind of kimpira with whatever ingredients it's only a side dish. So you never have just this and rice. This will go perfectly with any dish, any fish dish or a meat dish, whatever you have. And if you have it as a side dish this is way too much for one portion. This is going to be enough for two, three, four people. And both radish and carrots, the tanginess they have when it's raw will go away when it's heated. So the sweetness of these is in the front and then behind it is supported with the soy sauce and the sugar and on the surface there is aroma from the sesame seeds and punch from the chili. And this is just a perfect fill with any dish. And for those who like to drink sake this is also perfect to match with sake as well. So in Japan it's very typical or it's actually part of our Japanese table manner that we don't eat one thing just that. We should switch back and forth especially with rice. If you had a one more plate of like fish salted salmon or like karaage or katsudon so you want to have main dish and then a little bit of rice and then go into the side dish a little bit of rice maybe if you had another side dish then not that and then rice and then main dish and then rice. So it's actually better to eat just back and forth with different so that so that in your mouth constant change of the flavors and you never get boring with one flavor. Oh this is really good. Oh that was delicious. So this is a really simple recipe as you saw. It took me no more than like 10-15 minutes to make this and I often make one main dish and then this on the side. For this you just need one pan and then you can make this during the time when you're making the main dish. I hope you try it yourself at home as well and I also made this dish because I got a request for someone that they wanted to know more recipe on Japanese side dishes and so if you have any other requests please write that in the comments below. I'd be very happy to hear it. I hope this video was informative for you. If you like what you saw please subscribe and I look forward to see you in the next video. Bye!