Just Hungry

Periodically, someone asks a question about subsituting or leaving out sake or mirin from a dish (most recently to the chicken karaage recipe). This reminds me of how certain ways of thinking exist in Japanese and East Asian cooking, that may not necessarily exist in many types of Western cooking. One of those is the perception of the flavor of meat.

Whenever meat is used in traditional Japanese cuisine (including Okinawan cuisine), it is almost always cooked with one or more of the following ingredients: leek or another member of the onion family; ginger; alcohol in the form of sake or mirin; or sugar. All of these ingredients serve a single purpose, besides adding flavor - to counteract the perceived gaminess of meat. This gaminess is quite disliked, so you don’t really see dishes that involve meat that’s just been cooked plain, as you see in Western cuisines. Dipping sauces also often serve the same purpose.

Here are some examples:

• For chicken karaage grated ginger and sake both counteract any gamy quality in the chicken.
• In this nibuta (poached and marinated pork) recipe, leeks, ginger and umeboshi in the poaching liquid all serve to counteract the pigginess of pork.
• This panfried and poached duck breast recipe is not exactly traditional, but follows traditional methods and thinking. Here the alcohol (mirin, wine and brandy) in the marinade counteract the gamy quality of the duck, as does the wasabi the sliced meat is served with.

This principle is also true for many of the regional varieties of Chinese cooking, especially the Cantonese or Hong Kong style which is the most familiar to Japanese palates. In the pork filling for gyoza dumplings, grated ginger, green onions and garlic (or the more usually used garlic chives or nira) all counteract the pork’s pigginess. The vinegar or hot chili oil that’s added to the soy sauce for dipping also cut the gaminess. (Mustard serves the same function in the dipping sauce for shuumai dumplings.)

A very simple method of dealing with ground pork, a much used ingredient, in Cantonese style cooking is to add water which has been flavored by leeks that have been bruised and steeped in it for a few minutes. Sometimes freshly cut ginger is added to this water as well. One of the simplest and best fillings for wonton dumplings is ground pork that has been flavored with leek-water alone.

So, the next time you are looking at a Japanese (or other East Asian) recipe with meat in it, and wonder about substituting or leaving out any of these ingredients, keep in mind that that will affect the outcome of the dish quite a lot.

See also

Soy sauce based dipping sauces used in Japanese cuisine.