Japanese Cuisine: The Best Traditional Dishes and Ceremonies You Can Try

Japanese cuisine is known for its reputation all over the world. This cuisine has gone through different stages during its history, adding dishes or ingredient to its traditional ones. The most important thing of this cuisine is the ceremonies it entails.

It is a culture that has ceremonies to present its meals depending on the time and the guests they are having. Although these traditional ceremonies have been almost lost in the past years, a lot of Japanese people are going to lessons to know how to do them and when and how are they performed.

Different kind of dishes

The Japanese Cuisine, as we have already mentioned, has gone through different eras, each of them with their own style and ingredients. In the modern era, Japanese cuisine is based on combining staple foods, like rice and noodles, with a soup or with okazu. Okazu are dished made from fish or meat as well as with vegetables and tofu. These dishes are usually accompanied with dashi, miso and soy sauce, mainly because they are low in fat.

A common meal in the Japanese society consists of different okazu, usually three, accompanied by Japanese rice, soup or some pickles. These dishes are cooked with different techniques such as raw, grilled, simmered or boiled, steamed, deep-fried, vinegared or dressed. We can see also the Japanese way of organizing meals in their cooking books. Almost all of them are devoted to cooking techniques rather to the ingredients and some are just focused on sushi, rice, noodles or sweets exclusively.

Noodles are an essential part of the Japanese cuisine. They use them all over the time, cooked in many different ways and accompanied by a variety of other ingredients or sauces.  They are served both hot or cold and usually with soy-dashi flavor, as well as with meat broth, known as ramen. These kinds of dishes have become really popular worldwide and people for any part of the world know and eat them.

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Staple Foods

The rice, the noodles and the bread are some of the best known staple foods in the Japanese cuisine, although it has many others. Rice is the most important crop in Japan as well as its most important dish.  The rice they cultivate is short grain and it becomes sticky when cooked. Rice is also the main ingredient for the second important Japanese dish, Mochi rice.

This rice is stickier than common rice and it is usually cooked with red beans or pound into rice cakes. Rice, as a main ingredient, is processed and cooked in many different ways, like boiled and sushi, amongst many others.

Noodles are often served in meals in the place of rice. They are used in many dishes like soup dishes and chilled with a sauce. You can find noodles or rice in every meal of the Japanese cuisine as its main ingredients. They are cooked in many different ways, so it is impossible to have every day the same cooked noodles.

Bread is not considered traditional Japanese food as it is not native from Japan, but still used as staple dish with a lot of combinations.

As you can see, the Japanese cuisine is based mainly on bread, noodles and rice but, as they have a lot of ways to cook and present it, it is hard to get fed of them. In a traditional meal you assist on Japan, make sure that you will have all these three staple dishes with a lot of combinations that you can try. Because of these combinations, the Japanese cuisine is become popular, as they have made possible to cook thousands of different dishes with only three main ingredients.

Main Dishes

Apart from the staple dishes, there are many main dishes included in the Japanese cuisine. The main ones are grilled and pan-fried dishes, steamed dishes, soups, stir-fried dishes, stewed dishes. They also have pickled dishes, as well as salted and dressed foods.  Some of the most traditional main fried dishes are Gyoza, Hamachi Kama and Teriyaki.  As soups, the most popular ones are known as Dangorjjru, Butajjru, Sopa de Miso y Sumashijru.

The dish known as sushi, it has also its more well-known dishes as Nigirzushi, Makizushi, Temaki and Chirashi. As sweets and snacks typical from the Japanese cuisine we find the Japanese-style sweets, the old-fashioned Japanese-style sweets, the Western-style sweets and the sweets bread. Amongst them we have the Wagashi, the Amanatto, the Ginbou, the Kakigori, the Kompeito, the Anmitsu, the Dango, the Anpan and the Imagawayaki.

Beverages

Japanese cuisine is also well-known for his typical beverages. These can be divided into three main groups, according if they are teas, non-alcoholic beverages and alcoholic beverages. Amongst the most important teas we find the Amazake, the Gyokuro, the Hojicha, the Kombucha and the Sakurayu. Each of them is different and all have different benefits for our health.

As the main soft drinks, we can mention the Calpis, the C.C. Lemon, the Oronamin C Drink, the Pocari Sweat and the Ramune. There are others you can try to be here we only mention the most common. And as alcoholic beverages we can find the Awamori, the Sake, the Shochu, the Imeshu and the Japanese beer.

Besides what has been mentioned here, you will also find a lot of ingredients in this cuisine that have been adapted from other countries. What is true is that in the Japanese cuisine you will also find a lot of fish and seafood.

They love this food in any way it is cooked. Also, if you are planning on having a meal with a Japanese person or if you are thinking about visiting Japan, you should get informed about all the ceremonies that take place when having a meal, like the mentioned tea ceremony. Try all the dishes you can and make sure you employ your travel to this lovely country, knowing and tasting the best dishes of their cuisine and discovering the most charming ceremonies.