Introduction

Japanese food has the reputation of being hard to make and taking years to master. Although this may be true for some specialist styles of cooking, food that is eaten at home in Japan is very simple and easy to cook and prepare. Furthermore, it is healthy and can be easily introduced into everyday cooking.

Most Japanese food can be made very quickly as long as you can get fresh ingredients and a few simple seasonings. The basic seasonings include soy sauce, miso, vinegar, sugar, salt, sake, dashi stock and mirin (Japanese food rarely uses spices). These eight flavours, used in different proportions and combined with fresh ingredients, are the essence of Japanese cooking.