JAPANESE BREAKFAST FOR BEGINNERS/  healthy & authentic Japanese cooking tutorial in English

Japanese breakfasts are great, but there are too many dishes to prepare. What's the steps and order you prepare in your actual life? To answer these questions, I'm gonna show you how I exactly go through the process to be efficient in the kitchen. Plus, I'll show you how to make perfectly moist salted salmon and one vegetable side dish for my vegan friends. So now let's get started. Always starting with the one taking the longest to cook, which is either rice or miso soup. For rice, I usually prepare the night before. First, rinse the rice to remove the starch until the water is slightly cloudy and milky white. Then soak them in the water, pop them in the fridge and let them sit overnight. About one hour is ideal for soaking the sushi rice, but in reality, I can't wake up that early just for soaking the rice, so I always do it the night before. The next morning, all you have to do is transfer the rice to the heavy bottom pot like mine and add water. I do one cup of rice, one and a quarter cup of water. I keep the same ratio when I scale up the portions. To know more about the details booking fluffy sushi rice, I have another video, so I'll leave the link for you in the description box. Once it comes to a boil, stir them once, close the lid and lower the heat immediately. Let it cook for 10 minutes. In 10 minutes, let's work on the miso soup. Chop whatever veggie you have. My go-to is onion, carrot and spinach. I see soup as a supplement for kids, so I load it up as many veggies as possible. Also great for clean up your fridge, so just throw whatever you have. Cook veggies and place dashi packet into the soup. Let it steep for 3 to 4 minutes over the mid-heat. Meanwhile, let's grill some salmon. First, let me show you what I did the night before. I have this sliced salmon fillet, which is about 300 gram. The exact measurement is listed on my blog. The link is always in the description box. Make sure to descale it if you see any. I usually ask my fishmonger to do it for me. For my marinade, we need sugar. I'm using kibizato, which is between refined sugar and brown sugar. But any sugar except for the brown sugar should work. Salt. I'm using sea salt with a fine sand-like consistency. And water. Into the container, add 1 tablespoon of sugar, 2 tablespoons of salt and 1 cup of water. Give it a good mix. Sugar sounds a little peculiar for the salted salmon. Sugar will keep the moisture of the salmon and make it very tender and moist when it's cooked, as I explained in the pantry essential video. So trust me, you won't taste the sugar at all. Once the salt and sugar are dissolved, gently place the salmon into the marinade. We're gonna let them sit in the fridge for 12 hours. If you get the bigger chunks of salmon, just marinate them longer, like one whole day. How long you marinate is depending on how salty you want. But I would say please do a minimum overnight to season it properly. In the coming day, discard and wipe off the moisture as much as possible. The salmon has been dehydrated and become a bit firmer. You can also freeze them, wrap them individually and keep them in a container. It should last up to 2 weeks. My younger one is always clingy while older one is trying to finish up his homework at the last minute. But before he loses his patience, let's finish up our breakfast. We usually use this griller under the stove, but today we're gonna cook it in the pan. So hopefully all of you can replicate it. Lightly grease the pan, then place your salmon gently on the surface. Make sure the skin side is down. Cook it over medium heat until the bottom side is nice and brown. We don't want the salmon to be dry, so the trick here is to gradually cook the salmon over medium heat, which is gonna take you about 4 minutes. When the bottom side is nice and brown, flip. Pop the lid and steam it for another 3 minutes over small to medium heat. In 3 minutes, let's check on the miso soup and rice. Open the lid and shake and discard the dashi packet. The most frequently asked question is that if I don't have access to Japanese fish stock or kombu stock, do you have any alternatives? I'd say please use any stock you have on hand. Vegetable stock or chicken stock will do the great work. Add tofu at the end to warm it up, then off the heat. Dissolve the miso paste. Person the ladle and mix them in. If you want to skip the entire process, try my homemade instant miso soup recipe. You can literally make miso soup in a minute. Back to rice. It has been cooked for 10 minutes at this point. Off the heat and steam it for another 15 minutes. Make sure not to open the lid throughout the process. By that time, your salmon should be ready to plate. Make a bed of shiso leaf, then place your salmon. It's always nice to have some greens underneath to pop off the salmon pink hue. You will be surprised how tender this salmon is. Now make one more side dish and we are ready to eat. It's crunchy lettuce with nori seaweed sesame dressing. You can whip it up in 5 minutes. We are going to use one whole lettuce. First, press the core with your palm, then twist. In a way, you can remove the core pretty easily. Now roughly tear into bite-sized pieces. These parts near the core are a little harder, so tear into smaller pieces. For the leaf part, leave it in a big piece to enjoy the texture. I found this recipe on one of my favorite YouTube channel. I'm leaving the original recipe in the description box. The dressing itself can go with any veggie like carrot, broccoli, cabbage, so try and explore with any other options. Wash it under the faucet. Drain the water as much as possible. Since my kitchen doesn't have much storage, I don't own the salad spinner. What I do often is use two strainers, then shake them off to remove the excess water. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of toasted sesame oil, followed by 1 clove of grated garlic. Dig in your hand and toss them to coat. If you like garlic, please feel free to add more. It's difficult. Cover with a plastic wrap and microwave them 600W for 3 minutes. Carefully open the wrap and drizzle 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, followed by 1 1⁄2 tablespoon of toasted sesame seed. I'm looking for reusable plastic wrap and zip bag. If you have any recommendation, please let me know in the comment below. And finally, add 2 sheets of nori seaweed by tearing them into little pieces. Give it a final mix. Have a taste and add more soy sauce if it's needed. You don't want it to be too salty since we are pairing with salty salmon and miso soup. You can still enjoy the crunchiness of lettuce along with the massive flavor of toasted sesame oil and nori seaweed. It was just perfectly accompanied with soup and rice. Rice should be ready by now. Mix the rice from the bottom to top motion by allowing the steam to escape accumulating at the bottom. Try not to mash the rice grain. This is optional but it's nice to have a grated daikon radish and homemade pickled ginger with salted salmon to refresh taste buds. I have a homemade pickled ginger recipe too. Another question I often get is that is there any order to eat Japanese breakfast properly? There are so many different kinds of dishes so I often get overwhelmed by that. I don't want to be impolite when I go to Japan. It's such a lovely question, isn't it? So let me show you how you can enjoy it after setting the table. First, with the soup to wet your chopstick so that the rice won't stick to your chopstick. Then move on to the side dish. Usually, the side dish is less savory and light compared to the main dish which is grilled salmon in this case. So you want to enjoy the lighter one first. Then move on to the main dish. Japanese won't finish one dish at a time. We switch the dishes in between like eating the rice then miso soup switch to the side dish and back to the rice again kind of style. But most importantly, as long as you enjoy the food and show the appreciation to whoever cooked the dish for you that is the most polite way just like any other country. So relax and please enjoy if you ever have a chance to come to Japan. Hopefully, I got all the questions I got from you guys regarding Japanese breakfast and I'm thinking to do a Q&A type of video to celebrate our 20,000 subscribers. So if that sounds good to you, make sure to leave the comment below. And that's it for today. Thank you very much for watching and I will see you on the next one. Don't forget to subscribe. Thank you. Matane. Bye-bye.