What did the Ghost of Tsushima Eat? Recreating Samurai Food!

this is what jin sakai the main character of the recently released video game ghost of tsushima was eating fish soup pickles and lots and lots of rice lots of rice being served in a japanese meal who would have thunk it for those of you who don't know what i'm talking about ghost of tsushima is a video game that loosely follows the mongol invasion of japan in the year 1274 it follows the journey of jin sakai but before we get back to the food make sure to smash that like button harder than the typhoons that smash the invading mongol fleets yes i know it's a lot of rice but during the time of the mongol invasion otherwise known as the kamakura period in japan rice was everything in fact the japanese word for rice gohan literally translates to meal also a person's wealth was measured in how much rice they were paid now before gold and silver became common forms of currency many japanese people from the time would be paid in rice from my understanding a high-ranking samurai would be paid well over 20 000 pounds of rice per year along with rice they often ate fresh vegetables with some type of protein usually fish or the occasional wild boar or deer and a simple soup as for the seasoning they usually kept it pretty simple using salt miso or tamari which is a kind of precursor to the modern soy sauce so i decided to create a traditional samurai meal the same kind that jin sakai might have had it consists of brown rice pickled plum otherwise known as umeboshi in japanese grilled fish and i'm going with shishamo which is a kind of japanese smelt that's native to hokkaido and a simple radish miso soup but we won't be cooking this the traditional way we're not cavemen we have technology i pour in my brown rice and add the correct amount of water now for those of you who never know how much water to add to your rice remember you put rice put water until finger first joint i then prepare my soup by taking japanese daikon radish leaving the skin on cutting it into chunks and then boiling it along with some dried kelp interestingly enough dry kelp was just starting to become more widely used among peasants and commoners during this time when the radish is softened i remove the kelp which i'll be using in some other kind of dish and a spoonful of miso gets mixed in before we move on to the rest of our samurai feast let's see how this type of meal came to be it was during the kamakura period that we would see the introduction of something that would change japanese culture forever zen buddhism buddhism buddhism making its way from china the philosophy focused on the importance of meditation discipline and the simplicity of living the samurai followed a strict warrior code called bushido one of the main tenets of the code was to have unwavering loyalty to those you serve this meant that when the samurai took an oath to serve and protect their masters and their family they put their life on the line quite literally many samurai saw great appeal in zen buddhism because of the philosophy's extreme focus on meditation you see the samurai believed that through meditation they could become better warriors and also be able to cope and accept their own inevitable deaths on the battlefield the ideals were a perfect fit for the samurai's slashy stabby way of life so they embraced many of the principles of zen buddhism and applied it to many aspects of their lives including the things that they ate about a hundred years prior to the kamakura period japan had hit its golden age known as the heian period it was a period of peace and prosperity that allowed art and literature poetry to flourish as well as culinary refinement the royal courts enjoyed all types of food prepared in new and unique ways like steamed braised and simmered oh my when the samurai began gaining power across the country the royal and daily meals of the time became a bit more spartan as most samurai had peasant roots they tended to eat the things that most peasants at the time ate the polish white rice that the nobles before them enjoyed was now replaced by brown rice the exploration of new and unique flavors slowed to a crawl as the new warrior class enjoyed simple flavors food like everything else in zen buddhism should be stripped of all excess and be presented as is the pursuit of simplicity defined the dining table of the samurai the samurai preferred a simpler meal called ichiju isai which means a bowl of soup and one side dish this consisted of a bowl of rice served alongside a soup one side dish and finally some pickled vegetables now interestingly enough modern day japan continues to follow the traditions of the samurai with an expanded menu of ichiju sansai or a bowl of soup and three side dishes in fact if you eat at any restaurant that serves a japanese taishoku style meal you'll most likely get an ichiju sansai meal enough with the history let's get back to the samurai feast when it comes to the proteins of samurai and most other people at the time tended to eat fish mainly for my japanese smelt i'm simply grilling them in a pan with a little bit of salt now they may have splurge with a little bit of tamari for dipping but salt was often used as the main seasoning one luxury that i do have that the samurai didn't is parchment paper this allows me to cook the fish without the skin burning and sticking to the pan finally i add a couple of pickled plums to my dish because let's face it as much as i love you guys i am not going to spend a few weeks making pickle plums just to put a few of them on a plate now that everything is ready this leads me to serving size because the average samurai was burning somewhere around 3000 calories a day doing training working and fighting so he had to eat a lot of food and which one of these foods to quote mitch hedberg is great when you want to eat a thousand of it that's right rice now in order to get most of your calories from rice you've got to eat a lot of it now for the samurai who wasn't in battle he needed about 750 grams of rice or about 1.6 pounds of it now if you're saying to yourself well that's not that's not a lot that's 750 grams of uncooked rice once you've cooked that rice up you're actually eating 2.25 kilograms of rice or roughly five pounds of rice a day this is basically what five pounds of uncooked rice looks like and the average samurai would go through this in about two and a half days and here is what the average lunch would look like for a samurai uh wait um there's something missing ah there we go yes they would need to eat that much rice or roughly two and a half pounds for one meal now before our meal gets colder than the bodies of the invading mongol hoards let's go ahead and try it out this is a very very simple japanese style meal i would say the only thing that's a little strange is the amount of rice and because i am on a low carb diet i believe i can have about this much to go along with that we have these simple radish and miso soup it has a really strong savoriness to it thanks to that kelp and the miso these pickled plums are a classic japanese pickle ah that is delicious this is salty it's sour and it's slightly sweet as well and that japanese smelt um what's interesting about this fish is that the inside of the fish it actually contains the egg sac and there's a lot of little eggs in there and when they cook they're actually very neutral tasting it has a little bit of bitterness which might be off-putting to some people so traditionally a lot of asian cultures don't drink milk so you might be wondering where do they get their calcium from they would often get it from green leafy vegetables or by eating the soft bones of certain animals in the case of this shisha mole i can eat the bones head and all the whole thing and i'm getting i'm getting a lot of calcium i'm getting a lot of minerals i'm getting a lot of protein just from this one fish if you're somebody that likes something with a bit more flavor a bit more spice then you're gonna be sorely disappointed with this kind of meal but imagine the samurai eating something like this day in and day out for most of their working life this was the food that powered the samurai and with that said thank you so much for watching and please let me know what you think of this kind of video this is my first time doing a a historical cultural video like this and i'd love to know your thoughts if you want to see more please let me know down in the comments below and if you're new here make sure to subscribe hit that notification bell and i will see you in the next one

Channel: Straight Up Eats - Amazing Asian Recipes

Views: 106,950

Keywords: ghost of tsushima, ghost of tsushima history, history behind ghost of tsushima, what did samurai eat, historical japanese food, japanese food history, old japanese diet, old japanese food, washoku cooking, washoku japanese food, ghost of tsushima food, samurai food

Id: 68fJDdhzgTk

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020