BEGIN Japanology - Unagi Eel

grilled glazed unagi ranks alongside sushi and tempura as one of the best-known types of Japanese cuisine it's refuted to boost stamina Japan is the world's number one consumer of eels or unagi the Japanese have been eating a nagging for more than 5,000 years traditional methods of catching them are still practiced in many regions of Japan in recent decades farmed eels have provided most of Japan's unagi supply found eels have generally been considered not as tasty as those called wild but some eel farmers have developed unique methods to improve the play eels are born at sea then swim up rivers eel aquaculture begins with these wild born eel fry known as glasses but there has been a dramatic fall in Glassell populations in recent years after many years researchers recently completed a cycle of an Aggie breeding on this edition of begins apology we look at an item and how it has provided sustenance in Japan from ancient times to the present hello and welcome to begin Japan all GI Street American I'm standing in front of an owner here estarán in central Tokyo I don't know if you've ever had it on you but even if you have you do not know how good it tastes until you've had it in a place like this I just wish that we could transmit the aroma which is wafting from behind me to you through the camera this smoke is amazing Japanese people say jokingly that the smoke from grilling iñaki is good enough to eat with the rice just by itself anyway let's start off today with a look at how Japanese people prepare and eat or Nagi Japanese summers are hot and humid and that tends to SAP the appetite but at two naggy restaurants you will see long queues of diners packed with vitamins A and B munagi is regarded as the ideal remedy when you're feeling drained by the summer heat a savory aroma and great texture really stimulate the appetite this time of year supermarkets store many many packs of fileted unagi about half of Japan's annual consumption of unagi occurs in the three summer months this unagi restaurant has been in business for 200 years eels are typically delivered live then fill it adjust before cooking so that they don't lose their hallmark fathoms let's see how to prepare the most popular in Agra dish grilled with a soy sauce glaze first the live eels head is chopped off except for a flap of connecting skin the eel is fixed to the chopping block with a special pick then it's fileted along the backbone this knife is designed to quickly part the flesh from the boners and inner organs the feelings are cut off and the Phillies is cutting up its pierced with skewers to make it easy to grill those in the United trade say that learning to skewer takes three years to fill it agent and to grill a lifetime that's how difficult the grilling process is it demands great experience this is gamma 0 gamma Mata a fifth-generation alaki chef who has been in this line of business for 17 years he begins by pre-drilling the evil from five to ten minutes without seasoning this gets rid of surplus fat and any fishy smell charcoal made from hard woods like oak is used because it generates a stable heat the heat is intense and so the eel is flipped over frequently to prevent it from them Nathan Amma unagi has very firm flesh and is very fatty unless you use a strong flame the heat won't penetrate so you use a strong flame and keep Fanning it from above no God the Fanning is important to avoid burning the oil and to keep it tender the secret of delicious unagi is for the heat to work all the way through after the pre green the unagi is steamed for more than 40 minutes this makes the tough fatty flesh and skin more tender after steaming the skewers of eel are sourced and grilled again this time over low heat after grilling more sauce is applied and the eel is grilled yet again this is repeated several times until the flavor of the sauce soaks in the source is a key element in the taste of grilled glazed donut it's made from soy sauce and mirin mirin cooking sake is an essential ingredient in Japanese cooking it's made from mochi rice and rice covered in the type of mold used for fermenting the mirin is boiled to drive off its alcohol and then soy sauce is added to make GU Nagi sauce but that's not all as skewer deal is dipped again in the game the fat and the savory essence of an Aggie permeate the sauce at this shop that sauce is topped up slightly each day and kept in use today hello we've been spinning up for 117 or 180 years during the war we took the sauce away to safety so it wouldn't be destroyed in the air raids that's how important it is a typical serving style is for this sauce to be labeled over rice in bold or tiered box with the grilled eel then laid on top the fatty flesh of the Yanagi is juicy and the glaze has a delicious aroma these elements create a beautiful harmony that satisfies the tastebuds munagi itself has a subtle flavor but when it's grilled the taste is rich and delicious no other Japanese dish is quite like it this restaurant in Ginza serves unagi in the style that is generally made in nowhere munagi has fairly firm flesh and people tend to eat it in restaurants where it's been prepared by a professional chef rather than cooking it at home also the method of preparation tends to differ somewhat from region to region now in now we are in addition to the method of preparation being different the way they eat the unity is also different let's take a look we've got our Bowl here and inside on a bed of rice we have the eel as usual now there's three ways of eating this take a wooden spoon here version one you take some eel and some rice and you just scoop them up okay version one you just eat it as it is it's really crunchy it's very different from the way you get it in Tokyo which is its soft version - you've got your condiments here which is you've got Japanese leeks and wasabi which is Japanese horseradish when you take some of both of those now version three you take the same mix as version two and you add in this little flask here that's some clear soup stock now while I'm doing that we just got ooh and we have our low D the seaweed here that on top all right I'm going to tuck into this while I'm doing that you can have a look at how the Japanese acquired the habit of eating an egg in the first place unagi live in lakes and rivers but they have an amazing ability to move across dry land as well they can even slither up rocks when they need to get past a waterfall their powerful drive is clear to see this vitality is why they have long been regarded as a source of stamina Casa Vega hora is a lake straddling Ibaraki and Chiba Prefecture eel fishing has a long history here eels are caught in cylindrical baskets woven bamboo do Nagi have a habit of seeking confined spaces and a simple baited bamboo basket entices them this is the cause re running through mountains in Wakayama Prefecture unagi inhabit clear streams like this as well the tale of an eel pokes out from among the stones here eels are caught using stones piled up on the Riverland the fisherman uses a scope to peer down into the water and a special tool to pluck out deal feels like darkness often burying themselves in the mud so they have a distinctive muddy smell of river fish in the past this deterred many people from eating the widespread consumption of unagi in Japan dates back to the late 18th century this was closely connected to developments in condiments in the mid 17th century a new type of soy sauce was developed in the Kanto region called dark soy sauce it eventually became what is now the standard variety the ingredients was steamed soy beans and roasted wheat and the mole was mixed into the mixture was left to rest for several days once the mold had multiplied sufficiently it was transferred to vents where salt and water were added and then left to ferment after two years of maturing the mixture was pressed and heated the result was the so called dark soy sauce which is far more aromatic than any type of soy sauce that had existed before in the 18th century mass production became possible and inexpensive but high-quality dark soy sauce spread throughout it up as Tokyo was then not aromatic dark soy sauce eliminated any muddy smell and made possible the rich grilled and glazed unagi the became and Edo favorite this woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai depicts giant eels snaking their way towards the sky with people clinging to them it conveys a sense of the popularity of an IEE in Edo days in the late 19th century Japan's transportation network developed rapidly and the popularity of an aggie spread further the area around hamanaka a lake in Shizuoka Prefecture midway between Tokyo and Osaka became a flourishing base for Eagle farming yields have to be prepared fresh in order to retain their flavor the lake was ideally located within striking distance of Japan's biggest cities for an aggie aquaculture you need wild quart glass eels these could be caught in large numbers in Hancock oh and that was another reason why the lake developed as an eel farming Center the Eels were supplied to the cities where unagi cuisine became hugely popular especially during the economic boom that began in the 1950s unagi became a source of vitality for many ordinarily in the 1970s eel farmers found a way to raise eels faster by putting them in greenhouses where the water was always warm improvements were also made to feel feed and production efficiency improved this enabled unagi aquaculture to spread rapidly across Japan the advent of a new condiment and the development of aquaculture led to the burgeoning popularity of unagi throughout Japan as we've seen you normally eat the body of the eel grilled and glazed but there are other options too I'm going to have a look in here tell your mighty daughters on my dastar thank you if you've ever been to a Japanese restaurant and had what's called yeah hoodie which is like small pieces of chicken on a bamboo skewer this kind of looks like that it's not these are all different parts of the Nagi that you don't normally eat in restaurants that have been grilled on skewers like this now I don't know what each of these are so I'm going to have these chef here explained to me Anthony these are the inner organs I thought the autumn the flesh from the head this dark bit is the dorsal fin it's wrapped around garlic chives flesh around the ribs and deliver this so often and I was a sweet taste to it she was very nice now try some deep-fried bones oh wow that looks really good the Eagle bone the right bone which has been deep-fried so crunchy crunchy it has it's like fishy taste to it of course but it's almost like eating potato crisps or chips if you prefer to call them that that's excellent hmm so generally when IG is eaten in Phillips over a bed of rice but as you can see just about every part of the eel is edible now the unity that I've been eating today was farmed and that goes for about 99% of the eel that's eaten in Japan next we're going to meet an eel farmer who's come up with a unique approach to creating a flavor in farm deal that matches that of eel caught in the wild the city of the yuzu is in Shizuoka Prefecture on the banks of the all-year River a major ill farming facility here occupies 20,000 square meters and it's used to raise eight hundred thousand deals CER Kotoka has been farming in aggie for more than 20 years typical the Old Farms friend between six and 18 months raising a crop of eels before shipping them out but Kotoka takes things slow but I want to raise great tasting meal sweet and aromatic with lots of the high quality fattiness of wild ear that's what I'm aiming farm-raised eel is considered blonder than wildin but catoca tries to raise eels with tender flesh and skin and plenty effect to do so he relies on the ground water fed by the OEE River he draws up the mineral rich water through wells and pumps it into his anal ponds you Ilse spawns with clear cold water to approximate the condition of natural rivers in winter and spring he puts his glass eels in here in the hope that they grow into adulthood in the same type of habitat that wild ones do in the wild and Agee live in clear water during the spring then in water murky with plankton in the summer that's when they feed vigorously and grow then in the autumn as the days grow shorter they accumulate fat to prepare for the winter catoca reproduces these seasonal changes in his poems on the clear water of spring through the murky water of summer and the reddish brown water of water the eels that can enjoy this natural rhythm are able to store up nutrients their own way and they grow healthy and strong here is where the eels spend the cold winter months in an artificial stream with Chile 15 degrees Celsius ground to prompt them to enter their winter hibernation he withhold food for a long time the weaker eels don't survive these changing conditions you saw how lively the others were but these aren't the ones that don't thrive here probably wouldn't have survived in the water cat ovary produces this seasonal cycle five to six times in an 18 to 24 month period the goal is to closely match the taste of wild eel catoca personally checks the flavor of his own oggi once a week he grilled the eel without sauce he believes this is the best way to evaluate the taste of an Aggie he judges the aroma fattiness and firmness of flesh and tries to work out how to make the Onaga taste better day by univer when we ship heels that we have raised with such care and deliver them to restaurants it feels like we're seeing our own children off on a jet we're eager to see how they're judged and hope they make the customers happy it's the unstinting efforts of farmers like cada oka and their emotional attachment to the yields that make truly delicious unagi cuisine impossible and I can ill wholesaler and this is mr. Osama Suzuki who's a director of the company here so look sir I was expecting to see big glass tanks full of eels but I don't see anything at all so where do you keep them what about there in here now the waters draining out of here all over the floor quality you'll survive with very little water with the amount of water we've put in here they'll live for about a week are these all locally caught life I actually come from all over the country from all the major production centers we also have some eels from overseas 20 to 30% of aerials are imported but in Japan overall the percentage is much higher 50 to 60 percent Wow so every year more than half of the eels consumed in Japan are imported I heard that the price of eels have been going up by chopping recently why is that at all for the past two years or so the number of glass eels has been very small and that's why the price went up to 50 to 60 for the drop in Japanese wild ill populations is having a serious impact on eel farming next we're going to take a look at the latest research findings on unagi aquaculture farming a munagi is based on wild-caught glass eels but the population of glass eels is dropping drastically in 2010 the catch was only four percent of the amount caught in the early 1960s so researchers move forward quickly to try to establish a complete aquaculture lifecycle that doesn't rely on wild glass eels a complete farm lifecycle means collecting eggs from parents fertilizing them hatching them raising the offspring to maturity and then obtaining eggs from the new generation and hatching this was achieved for the first time by Hideki Tanaka of the fisheries research agents at this facility he's raising a few thousand glass eels you Nagi that come to Japan are actually believed to spawn 2,000 kilometers away in the South Pacific near the Mariana Islands at a depth of about 200 meters so this laboratory offers conditions similar to those in the spawning grounds dim blue light and low temperatures it took a very long time to achieve a complete cycle that did not require wild glass eels the initial hurdle was to raise artificially hatched glass eels artificial incubation was first achieved by a Hokkaido University research team in 1973 but the glass eels died quickly and failed to live to maturity one reason they failed to thrive was feed never one knew what glass eels fed on in the wild so researchers experimented with everything from fish paste to plantain we tried all kinds of ways to feed them but the feed would make the tanks dirty and the eels would die even faster than if we didn't give them anything that went on for years after much trial and error the researchers achieved success with feed made from the liquefied eggs of the certain species of shark combined with a soy derived amino acid and some other ingredients after 12 years of research on an aggie tanaka had sold the biggest challenge and believed that they would soon be able to complete a full lifecycle in the farm but then a new problem emerged whether Anunnaki becomes male or female depends on environmental conditions after birth all the eels raised in the lab became males so Tanika tried mixing female hormones into the feed as a result three out of five ended up being FEMA later these egg bearing females were artificially fertilized if their eggs hatched the cycle you in 2010 came the long-awaited triumph the first complete cycle of farm-raised unagi or the techniques 40 exists only in Japan but as soon as possible we want to achieve mass production and improved quality to support the unagi farming industry with reports of plunging eel populations not just in Japan but around the world research on commercializing wanagi aquaculture is a matter of great global interest it's always the way when something tastes really good everybody wants to eat it but when that something happens to be a species of fish you run the risk of overfishing and then as a supply problem one can only hope that continued research will keep munagi on the menu if you've yet to sample its delights and if you are planning a trip to Japan it is a must I'll see you again next time next time on begin depo nology we have the first last series of talk shows called Japanophile our first guest is an accomplished artist with brush funding who hails from Israel

Channel: Japanology

Views: 368,163

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Keywords: BEGIN Japanology Unagi Eel, Unagi Eel, Unagi, Japanology, japanology 2016, begin japanology 2016, BEGIN Japanology

Id: dgYeXXGYWtg

Length: 28min 0sec (1680 seconds)

Published: Tue May 10 2016