Japanese cooking shortcuts, tips

[Hiroyuki]

request help in the onion paste video:

the white substance that was added ('shuha'?) is it salt or sugar or something else

don't know Japanese but love that video as its something that Indian cooking can use too.

Also the gyoza trick, is it to drain the water? I watched it a few times but am not able to translate the visualization.

thank you in advance

(edited to use gyoza instead of potsticker)

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Salt. 5 g of salt for two onions.

I have tried this urawaza (trick) once to make curry (well, the Japanese type of curry), and the resulting curry turned out to be rather salty. That was inevitable because I used store-bought curry roux.

As for the gyoza trick, put cold water and drain it when it boils, by tilting the pan with the cover on.

[maggiethecat]

Well if you thought that was weird try this one...

Sausage Sushi

How to carve wieners into amusing shapes...

I'm stunned

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I'm stunned, delighted, and I want to run out and buy the cheapest package of weiners I can. Not just sushi, but birds and flowers and elephants and reindeer...

[divalasvegas]

These videos are great! I'll definitely try the potato trick. The crab meat removal trick looks both entertaining and efficient. One unsaid tip however was to start with freshly cooked, hot or warm crab since I've found that the cooler crab gets the harder it is to get out of the shell, at least for me. Now are there any Japanese tricks for a quicker, easier way to get the meat out of the body of the crab? I use the Eastern Shore crab picker method.

[tsure]

Well if you thought that was weird try this one...

Sausage Sushi

How to carve wieners into amusing shapes...

I'm stunned

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and for those with no knife skills, you can use the Octodog

[cookman]

In this same amusing series of videos, there is an instruction to soak a block of tofu briefly in salt water before using it in stir fries to keep the neatly-cut pieces of tofu from breaking up as they cook.

The trick is a salt water soak before cooking. Anyone know what the video says regarding how much salt and how long to soak?

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1tts94jyGM&search=urawaza

Edited March 19, 2006 by cookman (log)

[Hiroyuki]

In this same amusing series of videos, there is an instruction to soak a block of tofu briefly in salt water before using it in stir fries to keep the neatly-cut pieces of tofu from breaking up as they cook.

The trick is a salt water soak before cooking. Anyone know what the video says regarding how much salt and how long to soak?

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1tts94jyGM&search=urawaza

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It's silly, but the video doesn't say how much water to put in a bowl. So, all I can say is to put some water in a bowl, referring to the video, add one tablespoon of salt, and soak one pack of tofu for 15 minutes or longer.

The video says that the resulting tofu does not differ in taste or texture from unsalted tofu... Really?

Will I try that trick? Probably no. Besides, I found a site where a person says that the trick didn't work for her. She says that the tofu was salty and crumbled.

[Toliver]

I tried the "How to cook the potatoes to hold their shape" when I boiled my cut red potatoes for my corned beef & cabbage dinner last Friday. Worked great...the potatoes kept their shape (as opposed to crumbling around the edges and falling apart...like they show in the video).

[tejon]

I eventually got them, they just took a long time to download. I love the crab corkscrew and the how to keep your sleeve rolled up videos. I don't trust the dissolving cocoa one, they turn the cup further over when dumping out the results and hold it upside down longer, of course there will be less residue in the cup!

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I've tried the hot cocoa trick, and it actually does work a lot better than stirring in a circle. I find nothing at the bottom of the cup at all.

[flowbee]

i've enjoyed a few japanese tv shows related to cooking -- not on tv, but downloaded from some japanese multimedia newsgroups. luckily, they all had english subtitles. i believe they were captured off of hawaiian television.

they were:

- amakara avenue (food/restaurant program, has instructional cooking bits near the end of each episode)

- next stop (basically a tour of japan by hopping off at different train stations and seeing what there is to offer)

- three minute cooking (going by memory on the title...it was a series of little 3-minute quickie cooking videos...very nice and simple recipes)

- sushi! donburi! ramen! (a yearly show that features the best of those 3 dishes from around japan)

there was one more, which i can't recall the name of...i'll have to check when i get home it featured an older male host with a younger lady. a lot of the shows focused food, and i got a lot of cooking ideas from it (eg. ramen broth).

unfortunately most of the shows were really old (from the fashions, looked like they were produced in the late 80s to mid 90s), and their availability depends on the kindness of people digitizing the episodes and posting them (frankly illegal, but very much appreciated!).

edit: that other show i was thinking of is "soko ga shiritai"

Edited June 29, 2006 by flowbee (log)