hello it's Martina aka King Kogi and today things are going to get a little bit
saucy i'm not sure if i'm talking about sauces if i'm talking about something
that involves my condiments which would be... "condimentary by dear Watson"
i thought about that joke at 3am when i couldn't sleep one night so today i want to go over about
eight Japanese pantry essentials didn't say panty essentials which panties can be essential
but that's a different video there are more than eight obviously but i hope these ones
can get you started on some of the foods you love if you're interested in Japanese cooking
it can be extremely overwhelming to try to figure out what to buy at a grocery store
and on my king kogi youtube channel i'm going to be making a complimentary video to this it's
actually a cooking video so i'm doing some of my favourite Japanese breakfast foods using the
items that i'm talking about today all right my nerdy learning cooking friends let's get started
so if you're looking to make miso soup udon
tempura dipping sauce steamed egg custard the chahawam moshi chahuan mushi i can
never say it chahuan mushi or sukiyaki hot pot you're gonna have to have dashi dashi
dashima-hearrrrt so the average Japanese home would probably be using these pre-made
dashi packets let me show you what this average dashi tea bag looks like sadashi is the soup stock
of the cooking world it's kind of like how you use beef stock where you use vegetable stock so
dashi is what's used for everything Japanese and you can get these pre-made packs they basically
smell horrific this is like a fish tea bag and i can smell it throughout the whole house right now
like seriously p-u-o-u stink but really really necessary this is kind of like a cheaper one
it's made with katsuo and if you cut the tea bag open you can see what's inside of it it's got
all these little dried bits it's like shaved down dried bonito they might have
shrimp inside of it it could have mushrooms it's basically just a tea bag of fish yummy
gosh it smells so bad you guys you don't even know right now like i keep mine
inside of a convenient ikea container because it's smell proof it is seriously that stinky
if you have a cat the cat's going to be like me the whole time you were cooking with these
dashi and it's a lot more subtle than it looks and smells because the dashi doesn't have anything
like salt in it so when you think about using soup stock instant soup stock items in North America we
often use like chicken stock or beef bouillon and it has a lot of flavours in there including salt
this doesn't have any additional flavours like that it really is dried ingredients
like making a fish tea the flavour is quite subtle and so you will add to it for example
you'll use it for making miso soup but you have to add things like miso to it
but if you try to make miso soup with just water it's going to taste strangely flat and beany
now if you don't eat items with fish in them be aware that majority of dashi packs do have
a type of dried fish in it in which case you can use dried shiitake mushrooms and so you can
make yours using shiitake mushrooms and kombu if you want oranges upside down or you can do just
shiitake mushrooms but you do have to rehydrate them first squeeze them on out and then you can
start cooking with them or you can cook with all of these things and create like a super rich stock
so you can also make your dashi from scratch you're going to need kombu which is seaweed and
it's been dried it has all this kind of like white stuff on it and that is natural msg and people
will say that you can like wipe it down with a soft cloth in order to get rid of anything like
maybe some stones or grits but you don't want to like wash this off this is what you need to soak
to create the actual soup base oh and make sure you don't throw out the mushrooms once they're
rehydrated you can chop those up and use them inside of soups and stir fries and other items
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now you might have seen some japanese food with these kind of
pink and light brown flakes on them and they look like they're kind of like folding and
dancing and it looks like it's something that's alive well it's not alive it's actually a very
very thinly sliced piece of fish and the heat is causing it to like wiggle and move
you've probably seen it before on okonomiyaki that's that savory pancake or maybe something
from osaka like they have like the octopus balls and sometimes they add them on top of that so this
is actually fish it's bonito and they cut them into these like slabs and they're dried smoked
and fermented and they are absolutely rock hard these dried fermented slabs are put against these
special blocks with blades on them and they shave them into these thin curls then curls that look
kind of like this but this particular type of katsuobushi is used for seasoning on top of
things like tofu or on okonomiyaki it tastes a little bit lighter and it's shaved quite thinly
you can also buy a different type of katsuobushi that's used for flavoring your soup so if you're
making dashi from scratch which i've made a video before on how to make dashi you put those
on top of the hot water and it kind of soaks in and creates that smoky slightly fishy taste
you can also feed it to your kitty cats it is a really nice way to take something that's simple
like tofu and add a little bit of the katsuoboshi on top of it maybe a little bit of shredded ginger
a little bit of sesame oil or soy sauce shoyu and you immediately get that japanese flavor
bang and it's diverse because you can use it for making soup but you can also use it for raw items
onto shoyu aka soy sauce aka soya sauce now the one thing japanese people do not do with soy sauce
is pour it on their rice it seems to be something that goes on when you go to a restaurant outside
of japan they'll have like soy on the table soy sauce and people will get their white rice and
we'll just pour the sauce on it the equivalent would be you taking a salt shaker and opening
it up and just like pouring it out on your pasta or like pouring it out on your rice like that's
just not what it's used for but it is used for adding flavoring to different side dishes or
for working with the dashi so if you want to have udon or dipping sauces hot pots right when you're
doing the shabu-shabu meat they all have like a teaspoon or a tablespoon of soy sauce in them
so it's used more as part of a sauce ingredient rather than the sauce itself even the soy sauce
you use for dipping your sashimi or your sushi in can be a different type now be aware that not
all soy sauce is made the same think of it like salad dressing you can get yourself an italian
salad dressing and you might have one that you like more than another one because maybe it's
sweeter or maybe it has a more vinegary taste to it or maybe it has some kind of herb in it that
you really like soy sauce is also made in many different ways resulting in different types of
subtleties and saltiness some are better for eggs some are better for making a soup with so make
sure you try more than one brand if you can and if you come to japan this is your chance you guys
to put this in your luggage there are cheaper soy sauces like this one is a lot cheaper but
it doesn't have like the depth that something like this kind of a soy sauce would have this
soy sauce is made in the traditional way and how the heck is soy sauce made so first
you've got the soy beans they are steamed and then they take wheat and the wheat is roasted
and then it's crushed then you've got koji koji is the bacteria that they use to ferment it so
if you make any kind of bread or if you make any kind of yogurt you usually have a bacteria starter
so they take the steamed soy beans they take the roasted wheat that's been crushed and that
has that flavor to it they add it to the koji and they put that all in like salty water magic
and then it ferments then it's pressed and it's bottled every single factory has a different way
of making it they might have different soybeans they use different wheat they use some soy sauce
is ferment for years you can imagine the flavors it's kind of like getting an old cheese you can
get old parmesan or old aged cheddar and they all taste different but no matter what kind you
get you must have soy sauce in your house for a pantry staple when working with japanese food
now on to mirin and cooking sake this is something that really surprised me i had no idea that this
was used in japanese cooking it is a sweet rice wine and what does that mean well it's a pretty
low alcohol content wine it's made with like a sticky or glutinous rice plus koji and it creates
a kind of simple sweet white alcohol this alcohol can be really low like down in the one percent
or can be higher up in like the 11 to 14 depending on the kind you buy but when you cook with it it
burns off so why are they using this kind of like sweet cooking wine well it's really great
at evening out kind of a gamey or fishy flavor it's used a lot in things like glazes or making
something like a teriyaki sauce which we don't really make in japan like nobody says teriyaki
sauce for anything they might just say like tare like t-a-r-e which means like sauce in general i
think that's where teriyaki might have come from i am not a teriyaki historian this is just my
guess but for example if you go for yakitori that grilled chicken on a stick they'll ask you if you
want shio or tare shio means salted and tare is a sauce and everyone's sauce is different they like
dip it in and give it to you it's always a little bit sweet it's not like a salty salty sauce so
i think that's where the teriyaki concept came from in which case you're going to need mirin
for making that and then cooking sake is just normal sake but like the cheapest sake you can
buy and i just got this at the conbini i grabbed a cheaper one you can often evaporate the alcohol in
the microwave beforehand so it does add a bit of a flavor that's very distinctively japanese let's
talk about miso now a lot of people think of me so they just think of miso soup but it actually goes
way beyond that you can use it to make condiments you can use it for dressings like salad dressings
or for putting it on top of vegetables the breakfast dish that i make on the kinky channel
is going to be focusing with miso you can also use it in a marinade or you can use it baking things
i've had some incredible miso crusted fish it's sweet it's savory it has like texture to it and
the good news is you don't have to use that much of it so if you do decide to buy a pack of me so
it can last you quite some time i always keep two different kinds of miso in my house uh let's take
a look at the one that i use the most now there are so many different kinds of miso paste that
you can buy it can be extremely overwhelming i personally prefer a blend of different types of
miso something i didn't even know existed before this is the darker one it has a saltier taste
usually and this one is kind of the more common which is salty but also a little bit sweet
if you see a white miso paste it's usually quite sweet if you live in kyoto they tend to use a lot
of the sweeter misos i like to blend my misos together so that i have a little bit of extra
salty and a little bit of medium range salt to create like a different kind of flavor blend
so what the heck is miso so miso is cooked soy beans that's been mixed with koji you guessed it
then it's mixed with salt water and then this is fermented for maybe like several months or so of
course there's miso that's been fermented even longer all these ingredients that are fermented
are really great for your tummy because it's giving you that healthy fermented bacteria
when i was in korea we used duenjan and that's the chunky looking brown kind of miso version
and it also tastes different each culture has their own type of soybean they're using their
own type of koji or fermented starter that they're using and i'm curious if there's other cultures
that i haven't visited that also use a type of fermented bean paste i would love to know in the
comment section below where you're from or where your culture's from and what kind of fermented
bean paste name you have so there are so many more japanese essential pantry items i could talk about
but i think that these ingredients can get you started even if you just get like the dashi pack
and some miso you're already on your way to making miso soup thank you so much to
Skillshare for sponsoring this video make sure you check out the links in the info
box below for Skillshare and also for my King Kogi YouTube channel where you can check out
what I am cooking with these pantry essentials over um next time panty essentials.. no... wait