How to Shop at a Japanese Supermarket (A Tour of Uwajimaya in Seattle) | Kenji's Cooking Show

am I supposed to be feeding people at the end of this am I going to get you into like legal trouble if I feed people here hey everyone this is Kenji I'm here outside of wajima Japanese supermarket in the International District they also have other locations uh but I come here about once a month to go shopping for some Japanese Staples and Fresh Foods uh I'm going to take you inside and give you a little tour show you what I look for when I'm shopping for Japanese ingredients you [Music] ready obviously every Supermarket starts with the produce section um typically when I'm at this Supermarket I like to look for I I mainly pick up ingredients that I can only find here or rarely find in other places or sometimes find better quality here couble cha squash definitely one of my favorites uh my family's favorite couble cha squash is really nice because uh it's one of these squashes where the skin is completely edible um my favorite way to cook this is to simmer it and Dashi you don't even have to peel it you just take out the seeds really really nice uh especially for kids my kids love it um all kinds of crazy mushrooms um right now it's a matake season so these are matsutake mushrooms um among the more expensive mushrooms you can buy um they're extremely fragrant these are used commonly um as a sort of uh aromatic element that you would add to a soup so you you would make like a clear soup shave these really thinly on top of it uh to get that mushroom Aroma out they're really really intensely sort of sweet a sort of sweet smell to them ooh pomelo season so pomelos are kind of large citrus fruit um that are sort of dry you when you pick them up you you'd be surprised by how light they are they're much lighter than a sort of standard grapefruit or or much less dense than like a grapefruit or an orange um these are really great inside something like a salad so I would poach some shrimp uh get a bunch of herbs make a salad with shrimp and herbs and pomelo um I will take this one home too I do I do like to get eggplant here as well um so these are Japanese eggplants they're you can see they're much uh sort of smaller and more slender than like an Italian or an American glow B Plant um these ones are you use them I like to use them for a dish called Nas gaku so uh you essentially take the uh eggplants and then you grill them or fry them and then you brush them with miso and broil them this kind of sweet miso really delicious I'm going to grab um when I'm buying eggplants I look for ones that are kind of wrinkle-free H really nice and dense these ones look pretty good so we're going to be making this dish gudon so I'm also going to pick up the ingredients for that to make gudon I definitely need some ginger so grab a chunk of Ginger we will need an onion and we're going to need some uh scallions over here as well am I missing them over there oh thank you all right right in front of my face all right let's go on to the meat section so the meat section is one of the main reasons I come here um because you'll find it's not it's not just that the quality of meat is excellent but they also have uh cuts and uh certain preparations that you won't really find in a western supermarket Market mainly the one I come here for is this really thinly shaved meat um this is commonly used for things like Sukiyaki which is a sort of simmered meat dish um or what we're going to make yum which is a sort of similar to sukiyaki actually um this is a little bit bigger than that I need I'll take uh let's take one of these um they use the the meat at uh aaji Maya is from Painted Hills uh really high quality uh Pacific Northwest beef I always get a pack of these my kids I grew up eating these sausages these arabiki pork sausages these are these little smoked pork sausages breakfast sausages um I get these my kids love them also I always pick up a pack of those I'm going to get this so this is kurobuta which means uh black pig it's a specific uh species of pig black pig kurobuta it's a generally highly regarded as having sort of better flavor than your um than your typical uh pork all right now moving on to the frozen section we're getting sort of into the Fish Department the first part of the fish department I stop at is right here so the frozen section I always pick up this this is a packet of Taco which is salted POC Ro it's a tight similar to a Cod um so the eggs of that Cod are salted uh inside their sacks and then uh well they sell them Frozen here I eat these for breakfast as well you broil them um or or grill them and then kind of they turn kind of crumbly and you put them on top of rice you can also eat them raw inside something like onig or omusubi like rice balls now the fish department here I think is probably one of the best fish departments that you will find uh anywhere in Seattle everything is really fresh the guys are the people working here uh guys and girls people are uh extremely uh knowledgeable about what they're doing here um and you can see I mean you can just see how fresh those fish are really really shiny nice bright eyes that's always what you're looking for how you doing of course they've got all the local stuff like all the local salmon U but they've also got some other stuff as well some tuna uh L live crabs live oysters look at this you've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 different types of 10 different types of oysters now over in the middle of this section is also one of uh one of me and my daughter's favorite places to shop which is the Sashimi section so they they do have prepared Sushi which can I grab one of those can I grab one of these awesome uh this is shokupan um so this is a Japanese style milk bread my favorite type of bread they cut it nice and thick my grandmother always had shokun at home um it toasts up really nicely it gets this really sort of soft sort of cloud-like uh texture to it um really great for buttered toast this is uh my favorite kind of bread also really good for egg salad sandwiches let's get a 29 salmon combo here and then on the other side of this rack is where they have sort of all the fish that you can bring home all this hasimi grade fish that you can bring home if you ever want to have a sushi party at home um they've got everything from Taco so octopus um Hook guy these are giant surf clams um they've got all they've got chunks that you can use for making things like um chashi or if you want to make like a tartar or spicy tuna something like that um typically they also have Toto up here um the fatty tuna belly it looks like it's I'm here pretty early so it looks like it's probably not out yet um but they'll they're always going to have sort of the classics the um the Hamachi the albor the magodo um the regular tuna um and the salmon um as well as omelets and sort of other prepared foods uh that would go into your sushi party I think I've probably already said this but now we're getting to my other favorite part of the store which is where they have their uh prepared sort of hot foods um so they'll do they have um Sushi platters over there they've got onig um they always have these uh cold salads noodle salads I like the one this one is chicken I like the one with the pork Oh here let's get the um let's get a beef lemongrass beef noodles and then over here these aren necessary these are onig here I'm going to open it up I I promise I am going to pay for this before I leave but I want to show you how these wrappers work um they come with different flavors of stuffing this one is meno so those spicy uh cured eggs um what I love about these is that Oni so are best when the rice is separate from the from the NY you want the niy to be really crisp as you eat it so that's why these packages come like this so you essentially take the little tape off you unwrap it like this and then there's this red tab you pull it down and so that separates the uh the package of niy and then you can pull it to the side like that and pull it to the side like that and you get a perfectly wrapped onig with really fresh crisp NY oo unagi bowls no I already got the beef I'm not going to get an unagi Bowl as well we'll grab one teaki and one cupak oh if we're going to do um you on we do need pickles we need Benny shoga so this is uh Benny shoga which is this kind of pink pink pickled ginger as opposed to um the sushi shoga which is the uh you know the the sort of lighter pink one the kind that you get at the sushi restaurant this dark red one is used for garnishes for um hot dishes oh I generally also get U so my rules for noodles are if you're getting Ramen you get dried Ramen if you're getting udon you get Frozen udon of course if you can find fresh Ramen you can also get you can also which they carry fresh Ramen is also great Hi how are you good uh a giant selection of Japanese curries um I always go with golden Curry it's just the one I grew up with I know my sister likes Vermont Curry but um you know there's a huge selection of different uh Curry RS so these are the kinds where this is like one my number one convenience meal my number one convenience meal you essentially take chunks of chicken chunks of potato chunks of carrot I literally made this two nights ago sauté it a little bit with some onion and then add uh water and these Curry packs and uh it is delicious I grew up on that my kids grow up on that now this is this is well it's okay it's called calpico now when I was a kid in Japanese it's called kupu when I was a kid this was written out as c a l p i s calus um and so we would always get CPUs at home and my dad would call it CPUs um and I think they change they specifically changed the name to calpico because they didn't want it to sound like Cal to Americans like cow piss um but calpico it's a it's a the most popular drink in Japan most popular soft drink in Japan um it's a yogurt and citrus flavored soft drink it's uh not not sparkling although you can get it sparkling but fui Kake okay another sort of Japanese staple ingredient that I always have at home is fui Kake um I like to get this one the set fake so this one has um crushed up nii it has some sesame seeds it has dried Bonito flakes that have been cooked down with a little bit of sugar um it also has dehydrated eggs um so this is a basically a topping that you put on top of your rice you would get a nice hot bowl of rice uh and then shake some Foody kakea on top of it and eat it like that um or if you're my wife you will find this in the um in the pantry and just eat the whole thing eat the whole jar so I I generally have to hide these at home otherwise they get completely finished before we even get a chance to put them on Rice all right now this section is where I think people might start getting a little bit more confused it's all the different seaweeds um so there this is all this is all nauy so that's a type of Laver and so the way they make that is they take the um they take the uh the sea lettuce uh they kind of grind it up into a sort of Pulp and then they spread it out into sort of like pieces of paper um and this is what you'll find this is what you'll buy when you want to make something like uh when you want to make sushi right that's what Sushi is wrapped in or on wrapped in um you can also get it pre-seasoned um in little strips uh I'm sure you've seen you know like I'm sure you've seen the Korean brands that come in these you know that come with a lot of plastic packaging um I prefer getting it in these little jars um because it's a lot less waste uh but these are preseason sort of Teriyaki flavored sort of soy and sugar flavored seaweed snacks um I love those so this is wakame uh wakame is a type of seaweed that if you if you have miso soup the the little green leaves that are floating in it that is wakame um this this amount of wakam will last you like a lifetime because about a teaspoon of it is what you need for I don't know four servings of miso soup it really expands a lot when you cook it a lot of these are sort of ingredients that you would use to make Dashi um so either you can have um something like this um dried kelp uh along with uh this katsuobushi which is um uh katsushi is Bonito that has been uh salted fermented smoked dried and shaved so pretty much every preservation method you can think of has been done to this fish and so you end up with these sort of flakes that almost look uh almost look like wood shavings and in fact when you buy a block of kobushi that's not been shaved it will feel very much like a very light block of like balsa wood um and you shave it on a uh on what looks like a wood planer um and it comes out as these little flakes um these flakes you can use them to make Dashi which is the the basic Japanese stock the other thing you can do with with cat Bishi is if you buy it in this form really fine flakes like this uh you use it to sprinkle on top of uh on top of food so it's very commonly done say a block of cold tofu with a little bit of soy sauce and sprinkle of this Kats obashi and the flakes kind of dance around on top of it um or you could sprinkle them on top of say cold cold poach spinach that you would put in like a a soy Dashi dressing a little bit of katsushi on top Ki so this is this is another type of seaweed it comes in these little you know almost tiny little Twigs it looks like Twigs once you rehydrate them I I I told my mom once that this is my favorite kind one of my favorite kinds of seaweed I put it into miso soup and she kind of laughed at me because in Japan this is known as like a a convalescence food this is what you feed to like sick people and elderly people but I really love it all right our rice selection so rice essential part of a Japanese meal of course in fact you know the Japanese word for meal Gohan is the same word for Rice Gohan um because Gohan you know rice is your meal in Japan of course we don't only eat rice at home but um I typically get at this brand this is Tamaki gold it's grown in California um it's a kosi koshihikari the style of rice it's a short grain japanica rice um this is my favorite brand but of course there are lots of other selections as well and i' I've had this kagayaki as well very good but Japanese rice is short grain rice as opposed to say A you know like Chinese style rice is a medium grain rice Jasmine Rices are medium grain Rices so J Japanese style rice is very short grain sort of similar to uh an our boreo but less starchy so this section here we're going to have our soup bases so this is is called suyu so tuyu is basically concentrated soup stock this is sort of a universal seasoning it's made with soy sauce uh sake meting which is a sort of sweet wi sweet wine often a little bit of sugar um and then usually some kind of uh fish or seafood Flav flavoring so this one it looks like it's made with flying fish this one has some oyster flavoring oh and and Al also Dashi so it'll have katsuobushi flavor that kind of smoky fishy flavor um as well as seaweed so here you can see on the back of the bottle it's going to show you exactly how you're supposed to dilute it based based on based on your uses so I always have a bottle of suu uh in my in my uh refrigerator at home so these are the instant noodle Ramen section um they've got obviously Japanese ones and Korean ones instant noodles can be made in a variety of ways so the the way that they're dried sort of will affect the quality level so most instant noodles the really inexpensive ones so something like your you know your top Ramen or your or your cup noodles those are are dried by frying them uh so the the frying process drives out a ton of moist but it also changes the texture a little bit so they're a little bit softer um sort of higher higher quality Brands tend to will will be uh air drying their noodles as opposed to Frying them so this is the brand I always get um go on my so these ones the noodles are air dried as opposed to fried and so they have more of a real more of a uh a chew to them sort of a more sort of fresh uh Ramen texture and flavor um this is the brand I would recommend but of course I like all kinds of instant noodles all right so Japanese soy sauces I know it can be a little a little bit confusing cuz there's a lot of different types um the main category differences you're going to find in Japanese soy sauce are uh dark soy sauce that's kuchi and light soy sauce that's usukuchi both in Japanese and Chinese soy sauce you're going to find light and dark soy sauces um but Japanese soy sauces tend to be lighter uh than Chinese soy sauces overall so the dark Japanese soy sauce is going to be about the same Darkness as a light Chinese soy sauce um as far as the differences in flavor go um and by the way when I say light I'm not talking about calories I'm not talking about salt level I'm just talking about uh the style and the color they're called light because they're lighter in color um so the light soy sauces uh will have actually have a stronger saltier flavor as opposed to a dark soy sauce which is going to have a sort of sweeter flavor um dark soy sauce is probably what you're most most familiar with kikan is perfectly fine for cooking um if you want something a little bit fancier something that um say you want to you have some really great Sashimi or sushi that you're going to dip um they also have really nice uh smaller brand aged soy sauces that are much higher quality tamat is basically soy sauce that's made just with soybeans as opposed to a combination of soybeans and wheat uh it'll have a little bit of a different flavor but often times tamari is great for people who have Celiac celiac disease or a uh wheat intolerance so tamari is what you would get for that this is where you're going to find your sake uh your cooking wine and your meeting meting is a sweet cooking wine and often what you'll find is that um the meeting that you buy at the market is going to be um not pure meeting often times it'll be a combin sort of a combination of meeting flavor with maybe corn syrup and water but they do also carry actual meeting so what you want to do is always look at the uh ingredients ingredients list so this one is made with sake corn syrup dextrus and water so this is not actually true meeting this is sweeten sake it's going to work fine for most of your dishes but it's not quite true meeting I'm going to head over to the snacks section so what I generally come here for is the embe um and the arare so asbe is Japanese rice crackers um they have various kinds um so there are ones that are both like this one is salty and sweet so it has this kind of sugary coating on it um oh actually it says teraki so it's probably salty sweet with a little bit of spiciness to it um the ones that I get are where are we ah so these ones are kind of a more traditional um soy sauce flavor um and so if you if you're in if you're in Japan um the way these are made so you have these discs of sort of dried uh dried rice dough um and then you they they get grilled on top of over coal so you kind of flip them over and over on top of hot coals until they puff up and get a little bit crispy like that then you brush them with soy sauce um that's what these are I love these and then I always get some AR as well um so niy monkey so these are um little little basically the same the same rice batter that uh that those are made from but they're kind of little logs and each one is wrapped in seaweed uh brushed with soy sauce I think everyone's familiar with Pokey um these these are sort of um chocolate Creek chocolate coated pretzel sticks but of course they have other flavors as well chocolate and strawberry I think were the only flavors they had when I was a kid but now they've got all these crazy things like matcha tea they've got cookies and cream they've got I mean it's it's nuts how many different flavors they have now my favorite thing to do was to try and suck off all of the chocolate without breaking without breaking the cracker and if you broke the cracker then you had to get another one so it you ended up eating the whole packet these ones the popping cooking kits hi hi I'm sorry do you mind do you mind if I just grab one of those oh I don't I don't want to interrupt your you're fine just stck in shelves okay so these are these are called These are the popping C cook sets um so they're essentially you make your own who what is this candy I've never seen that all right this is a this is uh apparently a make your own candy um Hamburg steak so hambagu is very common Japanese home cooking so there's a there's a style of Japanese home cooking called yosoku which is uh essentially foreign foods that have made their way into the Staples of Japanese home home cooking Hamburg steak is one of them but this is a candy version my daughter will love that um these other ones so you take these little colored powders and mix them with water and it's kind of like a little chemistry set uh that ends up coming out looking like these Foods a really fun thing for kids to do I always like to have those at home how about we head over and start cooking the gon sound good so we are going to make some gudon here and when we make gudon we're going to start by making uh Dashi essentially what we're trying to do is make a s make almost sort of like a tea out of um the katsu aushi and the and the uh and the kelp to make the sort of best uh Dashi I would take this let it steep for maybe half an hour a couple hours in cold water before you bring it up to a simmer like I'm doing now but I'm doing this sort of you know the quick and dirty version so all I'm going to do is take a piece of kumu stick it in a little bit of water here we're going to bring it up to a simmer uh and then as soon as it comes up to a simmer I'm going to add some of the KATU obashi and shut it off and then kind of let it Ste steep just like I would be steeping uh tea the ingredients we're going to have thin SLI beef uh we got some scallions you don't even need the scallions really but I got some ginger got some onion this recipe by the way you can find it uh it's printed for free on serious eats uh you can find me doing this over on my YouTube channel and in fact you'll find this this version of it on my YouTube channel you're probably watching it on my YouTube Channel right now um and you can also get it from uh the New York Times um so for the onion I'm going to slice it not super thin so I'm looking for sort of maybe you know somewhere between an eighth of an inch and 1/4 inch so not like slivers I want onion pieces with a little bit of uh you know a little bit of texture to them something like that I'm also going to slice up a couple of these scallions use it as garnish don't have onions and you only have scallions you can do that if you don't have scallions you can leave them out if you don't have ginger you can leave them out if you like the flavor of garlic you can add garlic to it uh if you don't want to do this with beef you could do it with uh thinly sliced chickens thinly sliced pork it's very very easy and very very forgiving often times I don't even bother peeling Ginger you know depending on how thick the skin is sometimes know this Ginger is pretty uh young and fresh and so the skin is not really sort of that leathery skin that you get if you if you have le skin uh Ginger with very leathery skin I always peel it but usually you don't even have to cut it into slices little coins like this right then lay them flat and put your knife on top of them and give it a good whack I don't know if you can see that but essentially it kind of ends up chopping itself when you do that you don't really have to do much work chopping give it just a little bit of a just a little bit of a chop to finish it up but that's all you really got to do all right let's get our rice ready so this is a rice bowl dish um it's called gu Don so gu is beef Don is is a rice bowl so gon beef Rice Bowl um I am cooking this by the way in this in this walk over here you don't have to use a walk you can do this in a skillet you can do in a uh you know in a plug-in Hot Pot in a d hot plate on a dorm room really really really easy so the one thing you don't want to do with Dashi is really sort of heavily boil um once you've added the katsuobushi in you don't want to let it come to like a heavy boil because it'll make it cloudy it'll draw some of the sort of more bitter flavors out of it so really once you get this C kobashi in you want to really treat it just kind of like you're making tea I'm going to let this turn off and we'll let it cool this is going to take about 5 minutes uh so you know what why don't we hop back here in about 5 minutes all right so I'll see you then all right so it's been about 5 minutes I'm going to now strain out this Dashi and of course if you don't even if you don't want to make your own Dashi you can buy um hondashi which is a brand of sort of powdered Dashi which I use at home all the time it works just fine especially for a dish like this where you're going to be having sort of many other flavors in there but oh boy this smells great yeah so it smells it has this um Dashi has this sort of really Umami flavor you know it's all all the um uh all of the uh the the inosinic acid that's in the fish all of the glutamic acid that's on the uh the comu um that all gets extracted into this liquid so it has this really intense Umami flavor um a little bit of smokiness obviously from the Kats Oishi as well I'm going to get my onions and ginger in here and we're going to build our sauce so I'm going to add about say about a cup of this Dashi meeting I'm going to add maybe 1/4 cup of meating sake as well the ratios don't have to be precise at all uh you can always adjust at the end when you're tasting all right so if you've watched my videos you know that like this flavor based that Dashi soy sauce meeting sake sugar combo um is the heart of a lot a lot of Japanese home cooking so whether it's gudon or something like um oyakodon or S shodon like all these rice bowls are flavored with the same basic MI mixture lots of soups are flavored this way as well um so I'm also going to add a couple tablespoons of soy sauce in fact I might add a little bit more okay so now all we got to do is let this simmer some people like to sort of sauté their uh onions and stuff beforehand and you can absolutely do that um what you don't want to do or what you know is not very typical for this dish is to add color to the onions so if you're going to sweat your onions down or your scallions down just sweat them until they're a little bit uh soft but not until they start to Brown um because that sort of caramelized onion flavor is not really a part of this dish of course if you like that flavor and you've had this dish before and you know you want some more you're going to enjoy that caramelized onion flavor um you can absolutely do that you know nobody's going to stop you from doing it a little bit of sugar um sort of sweet and savory is really a common Japanese common Japanese flavor combination so if you think of something like you know you're probably familiar with something like Teriyaki and Teriyaki would have a lot of similar flavors to this so quite sweet and quite salty and very Umami so sweet salty Umami those are kind of the the Japanese flavors um you never really see too much spicy food in Japan you might see like a you know this dish you might sprinkle with some um uh shim togarashi some like a seven seven spice blend with a little bit of heat to it but Japanese food is typically not very spicy also typically not very sort of garlicky if you see if you see garlic in a Japanese food so something you might see it and say um Ramen or in like GZA um that's because those are dishes that actually came from uh originally came from China where garlic is more common so garlic not super common in very um you know more sort of traditional Japanese Foods so we're add a simmer once those onions soften up just a little bit more I'm going to add that beef so it'll take about a couple minutes a little bit soft but still have a little bit of bite to them I'm going to do it like this sometimes I actually you know depending on my mood sometimes I like to let this actually sort of simmer a long time until the onions really really break down and sometimes what I'll even do is I'll let these onions cook down in this liquid until they're almost completely blend it in uh and then I'll add some fresh onions on top and let them simmer for another 5 minutes so you get that combination of like sort of more cooked down onions and kind of fresher cruncher onions today we're just going to do it the real simple way so I'm going to add my shaved beef and we're going to stir this up now this dish is basically as soon as that beef is cooked through uh it's basically done you know you can simmer it longer if you want um so it's it's really a question of how you like the texture so if you simmer it a uh a longer time the beef will get um event well if you simmer it so anywhere between say more than 5 minutes and less than 20 uh it'll be at its toughest so you either want to simmer it for less than 5 minutes so that it's almost sort of you know just barely cook through um or you want to simmer it for probably about 20 minutes or to 25 minutes so that uh it has a chance to cook all the way through but then also sort of almost braze and tenderize um so I actually prefer it the longer cooked way if I have the time um I think it it picks up a little more flavor and the texture is a little bit nicer um but of course when I'm in a hurry uh I do it the quick way so as soon as this comes back to a simmer I'm going to put it on top of the rice uh and we're going to we're going to eat it and see how we did all right we're hot and add a simmer here so I'm going to spoon this or get this over the rice so I'm going to get the meat the onions and the juice what I really love on top of here is a is a poached egg or fried egg um we're not going to do that today but if you have like a soft poached egg that you can take the yolk from that egg and break it into here also really nice um so we're going to take some of this this H Benny shoga as well just as a little garnish all right a little bit of the Togashi here and that is our dish right all right let's see how it is let's try a [Music] bite it's really good I mean this is it's Japanese comfort food this is one of those things I could probably eat every day and not get tired of and as you can see like you know once you have access to these types of ingredients like thinly shaved beef um all the stuff to make Dashi like once you have those a place to get the beef and once you have the Dashi ingredients in your pantry comes together really really quick so one of the simplest dishes I know how to make at home always a crowd-pleaser um all right so Gan um I hope you enjoyed this tour of waji Maya again happy 95th Anniversary to aaji Maya um and uh yeah I come here about once once a month it's the best place I know to get Japanese ingredients in the Seattle area um so I don't know I'll see you around here all right guys gals non-binary cows I will see you next time [Music] yeah

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 532,627

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Id: OzJIDh9pwWQ

Length: 29min 14sec (1754 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 12 2023