15-Minute Mentaiko Pasta Recipe [Cod Roe Spaghetti]

Hey guys, it's Yuto here from SushiRecipes.com and today I'm going to show you a delicious dish called Mentaiko Pasta. This was one of my favourite dishes growing up, first let's go over the ingredients. For two portions you will need 200g of spaghetti, 1.7-1.8mm, 3 litres of water, 1tbsp of salt, 80g of mentaiko or tarako, 20g of unsalted butter, 1tbsp of olive oil, 1tsp of tsuyu sauce or soy sauce, a pinch of black pepper, 1tbsp of milk and 3 shiso leaves or 2tbsp First we're going to boil the spaghetti, get a large pot and bring 3 litres of water to the boil. While you're waiting for that to come to a boil, we can start preparing the sauce. The star of this dish is mentaiko, these are the egg sacs from Alaskan Pollock, which is a type of cod. Just cut through the middle and scrape the eggs out with a spoon like this, you can use the skin for onigiri or eat it with rice if you like, no need to waste it. Mentaiko is seasoned with chilli and spices so it's a little spicy, you should be able to find these at well stocked Japanese or Asian supermarkets. There's also a plain cod roe that isn't spicy called tarako, if you're not a fan of spicy foods you can make this exact recipe with tarako instead, we call the dish tarako spaghetti. Mentaiko pasta and tarako spaghetti are examples of wafu pasta which means Japanese style pasta, we can use Italian spaghetti with typical Japanese ingredients to create unique fusion dishes. Next, I'm going to cut the shiso leaf, it's also known as oba or perilla, cut off the stalk and then cut it into slices like this. These slices of shiso are to garnish the dish, it has a refreshing taste that really compliments the mentaiko, if you can't get shiso it's also common to use nori seaweeds. Okay so my water is boiling now, I'm going to add a tablespoon of salt, mix around and add the spaghetti, this spaghetti is 1.8 millimetres thick. We're going to boil it until it's al dente, so cook it for a minute or so less than what the packaging states. While we wait for the pasta, let's make the sauce. First place your mentaiko into a large bowl and sprinkle it with black pepper, we need a large bowl because we're going to mix the spaghetti in here later. Next, a drizzle of olive oil, about one tablespoon worth. Then I've got 20 grams of unsalted butter that I melted in the microwave for about 30 seconds, it's okay if it's not completely melted, just soft enough to mix in. Then one teaspoon of tsuyu sauce, which is a dashi based sauce but if you can't get it you can just use soy sauce instead. One tablespoon of milk, I recommend using whole milk for this. Just mix it up until it's well incorporated and then add one tablespoon of water from the spaghetti. This helps add flavour and stick to the pasta well. My spaghetti is ready so I'm going to drain the water and then add to the bowl. Just mix around like this until the spaghetti is fully covered. This recipe is great because you don't need to cook the sauce, mentaiko is often eaten raw and the sauce absorbs the heat from the pasta, it's so quick and convenient. And that's it! Dish up, sprinkle with shiso and enjoy delicious Japanese mentaiko cod roe pasta ready in just 15 minutes. Thanks so much for watching, if you enjoyed this video don't forget to like and subscribe to my channel for my tasty Japanese recipes. Hope to see you in my next video, have a great day!