Living in Japan means you have access to all the ingredients you need to make Japanese dishes at home. This is not only a good way to save money (as eating out every day will definitely become expensive), it’s also a great chance to immerse yourself in the culture.
If your language skills are not advanced enough for you to be able to read in Japanese, you’ll need to find some recipes in English. The good news is there are numerous websites that have recipes for authentic dishes.
Cookpad
Cookpad features the best Japanese recipes from the largest cooking community in Japan. Long popular in its native Japanese language, it now offers many of its recipes on an English version of its website. Currently, the site provides translations of several thousand recipes. To find these, just type “Japan” or “Japanese” into the search bar.
Just One Cookbook
Just One Cookbook is a blog run by Namiko Hirasawa Chen, an author/cook/photographer behind a book of the same name. While it does not have the extensive collection of millions of recipes, all the recipes are Japanese and feature Nami’s personal touch. Many of the dishes take 30 minutes or less to prepare, meaning you won’t need to dedicate much time to whipping up a delicious meal.
The blog recommends you start by browsing the Recipe Index to see what kind of food and recipes are on offer. You can browse by categories like course, dietary needs, season, or ingredient.
https://www.justonecookbook.com/
Bento.com
Bento is a complete guide to Japanese cuisine and eating in Japan. It offers a great collection of recipes, tours of Japanese markets, and tips on where to eat in various cities in Japan. It’s a great resource to learn more about Japanese dishes from all over the country — and then to recreate your favorites at home.
https://bento.com/tf-recp.html
RecipeTin Japan
The creator of RecipeTin Japan is Yumiko, who was born and raised in Tokyo before she emigrated to Australia with her family. She set up the blog to share Japanese cuisine with a wider audience by providing instructions for home-cooked dishes in English. You’ll find many traditional dishes on the blog for which it is difficult to find recipes elsewhere. There’s also a guide on pantry essentials and Japanese eating etiquette.
https://japan.recipetineats.com/
Japan Centre
Although it’s a website for purchasing Japanese products in the UK, Japan Centre is also a good source for recipes no matter where you’re based. It offers some interesting ways to search for recipes, including by ingredient, season, and collection, which includes categories like vegan, fast, and Christmas recipes.
https://www.japancentre.com/en/recipe
Allrecipes
You may already turn to Allrecipes for your regular cooking needs, but you may not have noticed that it has a whole section dedicated Japanese recipes. There are around 300 for Japanese appetizers, main dishes, soups, and stews. The advantage of using Allrecipes is many of the recipes have ratings, meaning you can find out what other people thought of the result before trying to conjure up the same yourself.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipes/699/world-cuisine/asian/japanese/
Japanese Cooking 101
If you’re completely new to cooking Japanese cuisine, you may find it helpful to use recipes on Japanese Cooking 101. The website is designed to make home-cooked meals easy, while staying authentic. The authors are from Japan but live in California. They share recipes that their mothers and grandmothers prepared for them growing up, with an international audience in mind.
https://www.japanesecooking101.com/
With all these websites to choose from to find authentic Japanese recipes, you have no excuse not to start cooking at home. Save some of your favorite recipes before you go grocery shopping next time to ensure you have all the ingredients you’ll need.
MichaelMaggs, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
