How To Make Japanese Breakfast

Hi guys, it's Rie. We meet again. It's been a while since I uploaded my last video. I've been busy just being mom. I also went back to Japan recently. The last time I was there, it was 2019. I was still pregnant. Then pandemic happened, so I couldn't go back for almost two years. This time, I mainly stayed in my hometown, Hiroshima, and spend a lot of time with my family. And my mom cooked me breakfast, lunch, dinner every day. It kind of reminded me how much I love Japanese-style breakfast. And it's very different from Western-style breakfast. Comes with rice, miso soup, fish, and two or three different kind of side dishes. Western-style breakfast, sometimes it's very heavy, but Japanese breakfast is lighter and well-balanced. It looks intimidating because there are lots of different components, but I find it's not too difficult. So you can impress your friend and impress yourself. And just to be clear, we are making Japanese breakfast, not singer and writer Michelle Donner. 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If you are already a user, use code Rie99 to get $10 off when you spend $99. Thanks again, Yummy Buy, for sponsoring this video. So, we are going to make miso soup first. To make miso soup, you have to make dashi. I feel like dashi is almost like a primer when you're painting. You use primer so real paint color shines. Dashi doesn't have a lot of flavor by itself, but if you use with miso, it kind of shine. And we are going to make awase dashi. We are going to use kombu and katsuobushi. When you make kombu dashi, you just put... Doesn't fit. You put a piece of kombu in cold water and just extract umami. You can leave it as little as 30 minutes or you can leave it overnight. If you want to do quicker way, you can just heat it up. All right, the kombu has been soaked in a cold water about 30 to 40 minutes. I'm going to turn up the heat and I'm going to bring it to a simmer. If you boil kombu in a high heat, it get a little bit slimy. Don't boil when you are using kombu. Look how big it became. I feel like it's expanded twice as big. Or am I just exaggerating? It look big to me. Ooh. So now I'm going to add katsuobushi. If you are vegan, if you're a vegetarian, you can just skip katsuobushi. I'm using two cups of water and about a cup of katsuobushi and bring this to a boil. So I'm simmering katsuobushi for three to four minutes. I'm gonna turn off the heat and I have paper towel lined strainer. So the paper towel catches like small flakes. I want to give a nice squeeze. That's it. Liquid of gold. Another option is instant dashi. This is a powder. So you can just dissolve in a hot water and you can make dashi instantly. So today's miso soup, I'm using tofu aburaage, which is fried tofu skin, and scallions. Whenever I get scallions, I finely slice it and put it in a Ziploc bag and freeze it so I can use it anytime I want. Now, when I cut tofu, I cut with my hand. So be very careful. Tofu is very soft, so if you cut on a cutting board, you break tofu. Don't do slice motion because you're gonna cut your finger off. It's kind of cut like, look like a ruby cube. So next, aburaage. Aburaage is a fried tofu. It is a little bit oily, so you want to do a little bit prep work. The easiest way is you just pour hot water over it and rinsing off the oil. I'm gonna flip it. I'm going to slice. Adding dashi back to the pot. And the tofu takes a little bit more time to warm it up than aburaage, so I'm going to add tofu first. When I make miso soup, every time it's on eyeball, I usually start one tablespoon of miso and taste it and add more if you need it. Okay, so it is start simmering, and I'm going to add aburaage. I think I should have cut a little bit smaller. Okay, I'm gonna take this out because it looks big. I'm going to cut it in half. Not too late. You didn't see anything. Nobody knows. And while it's going, I'm gonna take some dashi and dissolve some miso. This is good, and you want to make sure you turn off the heat before you add miso. And I'm gonna add frozen scallion as much as you want, and the miso soup is done. So next, we're gonna make salmon. It's main dish, but it's the easiest. I don't even use salt because I'm going to eat this with soy sauce. So in Japan, instead of oven underneath the stove, we have fish grill, so you can grill fish anytime. But I live in LA, so I set my oven to 400 degree, and I'm going to bake this for 10 to 12 minutes until it is completely cooked. And I put skin on the bottom. See you later. Take this out. Crispy on the outside. Let me get the spatula. Crispy skin. Nice. Now I'm making tsukemono. Tsukemono is Japanese pickle, and there are bunch of different kind of tsukemono. You can use different vegetable, like cucumber, cabbage, and hakusai, like Chinese cabbage. I think Andrew always do this. Put the ingredients like eye level. I find eggplant is more quicker than the other vegetable, so let's do this. I'm gonna just cut them in bite size. So I'm going to sprinkle. It's not baking, so just enough salt. And you leave like, mix it, leave around five minutes so you can kind of squeeze easy. Let's go. I'm gonna leave five minutes. Eggplant has been salty for 30 minutes. Oh, you already see the water. Eggplant sweat. And I'm going to squeeze more moisture. New eggplant contains so much water. And I'm going to discard the water and season with soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. And this is super easy, that's it. Cut it, squeeze it, and marinate it. I'm going to put some julienne perilla leaf. Just chop the ends. I love this smell. Nice, very refreshing summer type of food. Feel like this maybe just for two people's portion. Yeah, we have it. This is not the best picture of him. He made it for Christmas. I'm making tamagoyaki. Tamagoyaki is Japanese rolled egg. It is easy, but it looks very impressive. So as I always say, impress your friend and impress yourself. So let's crack three eggs. And I'm gonna just add sugar and pinch salt. Nice. You are going to heat up the pan. I do medium heat. I'm adding neutral oil. Anything works, canola, vegetable. What I usually do is use paper towel and wipe excess oil. Quickly swish around. And you want to wait until the surface is a little drier. And use your chopsticks. Struggling. Struggle is real. And you do this motion over and over until you run out of egg. You don't want to have any gap. I have one more roll. Why I always put my hand on my hip? So far, and I have one more layer to go. Last one. We gotta wait. If I want to make it perfectly, I think I can shape using plastic wrap. But this is home cooking, so I'm gonna just eat this as it is. Right, so last component is done. So all I'm going to do is plate and eat. For the extra side dish, I'm adding natto, fermented soybeans. It has very distinctive smell and texture. So some people love it and some people hate it. They usually come with tare, like sauce. And Japanese mustard. Kinda comes with this like cobweb-like string. It's Spider-Man. If you want to feel like Spider-Man, just have natto, hand-pulled natto. Throw at your friend. And karashi, Japanese mustard. Mix it. Look at this feast! So this is totally you can eat for lunch or dinner. Very well-balanced Japanese dinner. That is gonna be my band's name. Itadakimasu! When I eat Japanese-style breakfast, I usually eat miso soup first. So I kinda like wet my chopstick so the rice doesn't stick. I love to eat this every morning. For the salmon, I don't have soy sauce pitcher so I use like little milk pitcher for soy sauce container. I'm gonna take piece of salmon and a little bit scoop of natto. And I wrap with some seaweed. If you don't like sticky texture, it might be not for you. But you know, at least try once. And this is a quick pickle. Mm, very refreshing. I really like eggplant and eating vegetable in the morning also makes you feel better. And tamagoyaki kinda look like fake food. It is slightly sweet so it's almost like dessert. Each dish has different texture and flavor so it's kinda festive and fun to eat. Love Japanese breakfast. It's a little bit of everything. Thank you so much for watching. If you make this, tag me on Instagram. I'm at the Dessert Snob on Instagram. See you next time. Hopefully less than four months.