5 Must-Buy Japanese kitchen utensils – Master cooking! | Guidable - Your Guide to a Sustainable, Wellbeing-centred Life in Japan

5 Must-Buy Japanese kitchen utensils – Master cooking!

By Guidable Writers Oct 15, 2017

This post is also available in: Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional)

Dear foreign friends,

Are you enjoying staying in Japan? Or are you missing your country? Anyway, you might have to cook by yourself occasionally for saving the food expenses or just to recall the taste of your favorite dishes from home. So, why don’t you try to cook some Japanese food? I know that it would be difficult for you to copy the taste of some Japanese foods without knowing Japanese actual tastes, therefore, I would like to introduce you to some convenient cooking/kitchen utensils that might help you have a nice lunch or dinner!

5 Convenient Cooking/Kitchen Tools in Japan

There are so many convenient cooking/kitchen tools that you could find at a store, sometimes, it might be confusing for you to choose what to buy, but after reading this article, I hope you could find out what to use to be a nice cooker!!

1. Sushi Maker

This tool makes you a good Sushi cooker! Purchase the fresh Sashimi you like at the supermarket nearby your house first and follow the following instructions:

  • Prepare vinegar seasoned rice. → Boil about 300 g (about 2 portions) of rice and pour premixed vinegar (60 ml of vinegar, 25 g of sugar and 3 g of salt) on the rice.
  • Then, stir it with a fan. This process is very important to keep stirring until the rice becomes cooler and glittering with the seasoning on it.
  • Place this vinegar seasoned rice into this tool, push lightly and put Sashimi you purchased on the rice with Wasabi in between.
  • Then, just put the stuffed one onto the other part of this tool. Lightly push them all…..
  • Wow! Gorgeous sushi is ready to go!!

Don’t you think that you could have a nice sushi party at home? Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee the taste as it depends on your rice cooking skill… Anyway, Good luck!

2. Butter Cutter

Even though you could find butter packed in small pieces in a Japanese supermarket, it costs more, compares to purchasing the bulk amount and cut it by yourself. Then and thus, you have to cut a common butter by knife whenever you use. What a cumbersome…Don’t you think so? If you use this butter case with a cutter, you could cut a butter into small portion weighs about 5g easily. Thus, when you cook by referring to a cooking book and if you have to use a butter by weight, you could just pick these pieces depending on the amount you need.

3. Miso Muddler

You know miso soup and like it, right? However, when you make it by yourself, sometimes, it either tastes too salty or too thin… Now, you could use this miso muddler to help you to make good miso soup. One side is for one portion while the other side is for two portions. Just take miso with this tool, put into the pot and dissolve. (At first, you should boil some ingredients you want for miso soup, such as Tofu, vegetables and so on before addition of miso.) I recommend adding a small amount of Mirin and/or Yogurt into such pot together with Miso, which might sound weird, but you definitely should try it and you might be able to get three stars from your friends…

4. K+dep

This tool has been getting familiar in Japan recently, as you do not need to use any oils for cooking with it and therefore reduce some calorie-intake. You could make good baked fish, beef and/or vegetables using this tool with a microwave oven. This tool could save your precious time as well!!

5. Scissors  

After cooking… you probably feel lazy for cleaning and sorting the garbage…It should be very cumbersome when doing it with hands…. As you may know, in Japan, you have to segregate the garbage into mainly recyclable and non-recyclable. In Tokyo, belief or not, there are around 15 categories which should be separately disposed of in some area in the most complicated case! The numbers of categories and when those would be picked up by the city are depending on the area where you live, it is so complicated, even for Japanese. (In Kansai area, this system is much easier…)

Now, if you use this scissor, you might be able to segregate those garbage easier and smaller.

You could prevent some troubles with your neighbors for not disposing garbage in the right way, please keep a good relationship with your neighbors!!

I know boys tend to hold themselves back when it comes to cooking, but with all the convenient tools you could find here in Japan, you’ll master it for sure! If you would cook for your friends, I am sure you would be a popular person among them. If you think that you became a good cooker, why don’t you invite me to your party?! I don’t expect you to be a three stars’ cooker, however, if you think that you could satisfy me, I would be there with many beers!! Ha, ha!! Please enjoy!!!

 

By Kenny Y./Japan