A Complete Guide
Japanese
cuisine makes heavy use of rice, noodles, vegetables, seaweed, soy
products, and mushrooms. But as a nation comprised of several large
islands in the Pacific, no cuisine is more rooted in seafood than
Japan’s. Not only is seafood a primary ingredient in many Japanese
dishes, fish-derived seasonings are so widespread as to be almost
inescapable. All of this gives Japanese food the distinction of being
one of the most plant-based of all cuisines, yet simultaneously one of
the least vegan-friendly. In fact, it’s so difficult to reliably order a
vegan meal at a typical Japanese restaurant that you probably shouldn’t
even make the attempt. In many cases the food comes infuriatingly close
to being entirely vegan while still missing the mark.
Fish is
easy enough to avoid, but fish-based seasonings are not. That’s mostly
because of a seasoning powder called dashi, which is usually made
primarily of fish flakes. Dashi shows up everywhere in Japanese
cooking. They put it into soups, sushi rice, dipping sauces, dressings,
and many other savory dishes. Dashi provides the umami
flavor that can’t easily be replicated with other common Japanese
ingredients. Of course, there are vegan versions of dashi, but you’re
likely only going to find that in vegan restaurants and cookbooks.
Pork
is not a traditional part of the Japanese diet, but it has become a
popular Japanese food in recent decades thanks to Japan’s proximity to
China. It’s commonly put into gyoza dumplings (a Chinese favorite that
has become a popular appetizer and bar menu item in Japan), and Japanese
vegetable dishes often contain tiny amounts of pork seasoning. A great
many Japanese chefs habitually put fish or pork seasoning in all of
their dishes.
Japanese Recipes
While obtaining vegan food
from Japanese restaurants is tricky to say the least, making vegan
Japanese food yourself is easy enough.
You won’t
find Japanese-style recipes in most general-interest vegan cookbooks. So
if you’re interested in learning to cook Japanese food you should get
ahold of a vegan cookbook specifically devoted to the cuisine. There are
only a few vegan and vegetarian Japanese cookbooks in print, and the
most popular vegan title dates all the way back to 1999: Japanese Cooking: Contemporary & Traditional,
by Miyoko Schinner. At just 174 pages it’s relatively short, but
Schinner is a superstar chef in the vegan world who covers a lot of
ground without wasting words. Her cookbook does a superb job of
introducing you to Japanese cooking techniques, and will enable you to
prepare authentic versions of many classic dishes. That said, the vegan
cookbook market is long overdue for a comprehensive book on the topic
featuring extensive full-color food photography and high-end production
values.
Vegan Japanese Staples
Getting started cooking
Japanese food involves gaining familiarity with the key ingredients.
Here are some of the main vegan staples of Japanese cooking.
Miso
Miso
is one of the key ingredients of both Japanese and Chinese cooking.
It’s a fermented salted soy paste that delivers an a earthy, savory,
umami flavor to a variety of soups and broths. When made through
traditional means, miso is quite expensive since it ferments for years
at a time. There are numerous varieties of miso, from blond to red to
rich dark brown. Brown misos are by far the most common. You never want
to boil miso or expose it to high heat. It’s usually stirred into broths
just before serving.
Tofu
Tofu is as popular in Japan as it is in China, and appears in a wide variety of dishes. Here’s our brief guide to tofu if you want to learn the basics.
Soba and Udon Noodles
These
are dried straight noodles packaged like spaghetti. Authentic soba is
100 percent buckwheat, and costs at least quadruple the price of Italian
pasta. Cheaper sobas are 90 percent wheat and only 10 percent
buckwheat. If you’re going to eat soba, get the good stuff. Udon noodles
are 100 percent wheat, are thicker than soba, and resemble a flattened
spaghetti noodle.
Both Soba and Udon are traditionally served in a tsuyu broth, which is typically made from soy sauce, ginger, wasabi, and dashi.
You
can also use these noodles in a variety of non-traditional ways, such
as topping them with peanut sauce, mixing them together with sautéed
vegetables, or as the base of a seaweed salad.
Gomacio
One
of the the most popular Japanese seasonings, it’s made from roasted
black sesame and salt. Gomacio adds a nice texture, saltiness, and a bit
of protein. It’s terrific when shaken just before serving onto soups,
noodles, or rice dishes.
Since it’s just two ingredients, you can
save a lot of money by making gomacio yourself. Even if you rarely serve
Japanese food, gomacio is well worth keeping on hand as it’s a
wonderful seasoning for almost any dish.
Tamari and Shoyu
In a bottle, these two black liquids are impossible to tell apart, but they’re made very differently.
Tamari
is a byproduct of miso-making—it’s the liquid decanted as the soy paste
ferments. So tamari has just three ingredients: water, fermented soy,
and salt. Owing to its expensive production process, it’s pricey and
much sought after.
Shoyu is made from a mixture of mashed soy and
meat. It’s usually cheaper than tamari, but still significantly more
expensive than mass market soy sauces.
Mushrooms
There is
no culture that embraces mushrooms as much as Japan. Any grocery will
have five or ten types of mushrooms—and not a single one of those
horrible American-style button mushrooms in sight.
Sprouts
The
Japanese love of mushrooms is nearly matched by their love for sprouts.
Unlike the United States, you won’t find alfalfa or clover sprouts in
stores. Every Japanese grocery will feature mung bean sprouts as well as
two or three bright-green sprouts, most commonly daikon radish and soy.
Wasabi
Wasabi
is a ridiculously hot radish paste. The wasabi radish is one of the
most difficult foods in the world to grow and is right up there with
saffron and truffles in terms of being obscenely expensive. Here’s a
moving and beautifully filmed seven minute documentary profiling an eighth-generation wasabi farmer in Japan.
Unless
you’re dining at an extremely expensive sushi restaurant the “wasabi”
you’re being served is almost invariably horseradish. You can buy tubes
of this phony wasabi for about a dollar. The fake stuff is still
delicious. Squirt a couple centimeters’ worth into a couple tablespoons
of tamari, mix it up, and you’ve got a superb dipping sauce for vegan sushi.
Seaweed
Japanese
meals frequently include a small side dish of seaweed. Most often it’s
either wakame (broad, bright green strands), or hijiki (jet black, thin
curly strands). Seaweed is incredibly nutritious and is one of the rare
foods that’s rich in iodine.
Rice
Rice
is so popular in Japan that rice cookers are found in most kitchens.
Sadly, the Japanese eat a lot more white rice than brown. Sushi rice is
merely short-grained white rice that’s rinsed thoroughly and cooked with
a bit less water than usual. This causes the rice to bind up together,
which makes it perfect for nori rolls. It’s also possible to prepare
short-grain brown rice this way. The rice won’t stick together was well
as if it were white, but your nori rolls will be much more healthful.
Pickled Ginger
Thinly-sliced
pickled ginger is often served alongside sushi. It’ll clear the palette
between pieces of vegan nori. It’s my unshakable belief that vegan nori
rolls, pickled ginger, and Asahi Prime Rich beer constitute the holy
trinity of Japanese cuisine.
Umeboshi
The idea of eating a
dried salted pickled plum might sound off-putting, but it’s well worth
trying since it’s one of the signature meal accompaniments of Japanese
cuisine. You can also eat fresh (not dried) plums called umezuke,
which are prepared the same way. Both umeboshi and umezuke plums are
thought to promote better digestion and enhance longevity.
Maybe
the best way to experience umeboshi is to serve it like the mango pickle
garnish that’s beloved in Indian cuisine. That is, finely chop a couple
umeboshi up (removing and discarding the pits!) and serve it a little
alongside your favorite rice dish. Both umeboshi and mango pickle are
sour, salted fruits with that pack a big hit of umami.
Popular Vegan Japanese Dishes
Here are some of the most common dishes in Japan that are either always vegan or easy to prepare that way:
Edamame
Edamame
(pronounced Ehdah-mah-may, with the accent on the first syllable) is
the Japanese word for soybeans. It’s probably the most popular side-dish
or appetizer in Japan. Nearly every bar in the country offers edamame.
Just like English peas, soybeans grow in an inedible pod, each typically
containing three to five beans. A soybean is two or three times bigger
than an English pea. Because soybeans contain some fat, they’ve got a
richer, deeper flavor than peas. In restaurants, soybeans are sometimes
steamed and served in the pod, which you’d pop open like peanuts in the
shell. Other times the pod is removed and they’re served in a small
dish, alongside dipping sauce, and eaten with chopsticks.
Seasoned Cucumber
Seasoned
cucumber runs neck-and-neck with edamame as Japan’s most popular
appetizer or bar food. And like edamame, it’s one of the few items you
can get while eating out that’s all but guaranteed to be vegan. This
dish is always made fresh. The chef cuts a piece of cucumber into
strips, roughs up the skin so it’ll absorb the seasoning, and then adds
tamari and sesame oil. That’s all there is to it. It’s a cheap and easy
appetizer or beer accompaniment that’s remarkably healthy.
Ramen
Ramen
is to modern-day Japan what hamburgers were to 1970s America. You’d be
hard-pressed to find a cheap or mid-priced lunch spot in Japan that
doesn’t offer steaming bowls of ramen.
Traditional ramen caught on
because it’s satisfying, filling, and made from the cheapest
ingredients: fried noodles, meat stock, a few vegetables, and lots of
salt. It has become a ubiquitous food for impoverished American college
students because it’s filling, can be prepared in minutes, and you can
find three cups for a dollar in many discount stores.
But ramen
doesn’t have to be cheap and made from inferior ingredients. It can be
both nutritious and gourmet. The fried noodles can be upgraded to whole
grain, and a quality vegetable broth can be used in place of scary
dehydrated meat powder. Any vegetarian Japanese cookbook will feature at
least one vegan ramen recipe.
Sweet Potato
One of the
most popular vegetables in Japan, sweet potatoes make a perfect side
dish. They’re typically baked whole at relatively low heat for about an
hour, then peeled prior to serving. They are a terrific accompaniment to
rice, and are loaded with beta carotene and other nutrients.
Nori Rolls
Sushi is one of the fussiest cuisines imaginable, and as the movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi
memorably recounts, novice Japanese chefs spend years apprenticing to
sushi masters. But the simplest sushi dish, the nori roll, is something
anyone can master in minutes. You simply put a sheet of nori on a sushi
mat, spread on some sushi rice, put a line of chopped vegetables running
across the center of the sheet, and then use the mat to roll the thing
up (sealing things up by moistening where the two ends of nori join
together). Once you’ve got your roll, you use a serrated knife to slice
off pieces about two centimeters wide. The most common vegan fillings
include avocado, cucumber, roasted pumpkin, and pickled radish.
You
can buy vegan sushi at most natural food stores. Any sushi restaurant
will be happy to make it for you as well (although their rice may be
seasoned with dashi.) The trouble with vegan sushi sold by non-vegan
restaurants is it’s almost invariably overpriced. Almost no food is
cheaper to make than vegan sushi but restaurants generally charge nearly
the same price that they do for sushi made with expensive cuts of fish.
Nato (Rhymes with Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto)
Fermented
chopped soybeans with a little tamari or shoyu mixed in. These are sold
in every Japanese grocery. The seasoning packs of pre-made nato may
contain fish ingredients, but vegan tamari or shoyu can be used instead.
The nato itself is always vegan.
Mochi
Vegan Japanese
meals may be tough to find, but desserts couldn’t be easier. That’s
because the most beloved sweet in Japan is a rice dough and red bean
concoction called mochi (pronounced: moehchee, with neither syllable
accented). Mochi is nearly always vegan, and most varieties of mochi
have a lot less sugar than typical western desserts. Serving sizes are
saner too, since the typical piece of mochi can be eaten in one to three
bites.
Macrobiotics and Shojin-Ryori
Whether you’re
in or outside of Japan, vegan Japanese food is tough to find. So vegan
dining enthusiasts will want to know about macrobiotic and shojin-ryori meals.
Macrobiotics
is a style of eating invented in the 1930s by George Oshawa and
subsequently popularized in the 1960s by Michio Kushi. As both Oshawa
and Kushi were Japanese, the sensibilities of macrobiotic cuisine
is Japanese as well. While macrobiotic meals usually feature fish, if
that’s omitted pretty much everything else is vegan, since macrobiotic
principles shun meat, eggs, and dairy products.
One virtue of
macrobiotics is that its meals invariably feature brown rice, as opposed
to white rice that is the default choice in Japan. Macrobiotic meals
are often served in bento boxes, which usually have five or six
compartments. A typical vegan macrobiotic meal might include some
grilled tofu as an entree, plus sides of sweet potato, hijiki seaweed,
pickled vegetables, adzuki beans, and some squash. Eaten once a week, I
think it’s one of the healthiest and tastiest change-of-pace lunches you
could have.
In addition to macrobiotics, there is one other
vegan-friendly style of Japanese cuisine. It was developed by Japan’s
Zen Buddhist monks and is called shojin-ryori. The trouble is
that, despite the Buddha’s precept against killing, the extent to which
Buddhist monks practice vegetarianism and veganism varies widely between
sects. But it’s a safe bet that if someone is proclaiming their food to
be shojin-ryori, it’s almost certainly vegetarian and very
likely vegan. Zen Buddhism may be the most ascetic of the world’s major
religions, so it’s no surprise that shojin-ryori food tends to
be minimalist and plain by Western standards. But while it can fairly be
called bland (since, after all, observant Buddhists eschew strong
spices as well as onions and garlic) it can also be some of the most
healthful food you’ll ever encounter. shojin-ryori dishes typically favor staples like rice, sweet potatoes, sprouts, beans, steamed vegetables, and broths.
Gourmet all-vegan Japanese restaurants are rare, but there might be one near you. Some well-known ones include: Kajitsu in New York City, Shojin in Los Angeles, Cha-Ya in San Francisco and Berkeley, and Zen Japan in Australia.
Eating Vegan in Japan
Being
vegan is incredibly easy in Japan—if you’ve got access to a kitchen. If
you don’t, you’re going to be a very hungry vegan. Outside of Tokyo,
vegan-friendly restaurants are uncommon. Some large cities in Japan
still don’t have a single vegan-friendly restaurant. So if you’re going
to Japan, spend the extra money to get a hotel or AirBNB with a
kitchen or kitchenette. It’ll make the difference between being happy
and well-fed, and having to make due with extremely limited prepared
options.
As long as you do your own cooking, you can eat
wonderfully. Japan is full of mid-sized supermarkets
offering outstanding produce sections. Vegetables are reasonably
priced and of superb quality. It’s fair to say that few countries can
compare to Japan when it comes to high quality produce at low cost.
There are a few exceptions here. Melons of various forms tend to be
quite expensive. And mangoes are exorbitant. I’ve seen mangoes in the
supermarket costing more than $25 apiece. That’s not a typo. Now
granted, they were very nice looking mangoes but at that price a
dozen mangoes could buy you airfare to Hawaii where you can often
buy them for next to nothing.
As you would expect, tofu is widely
available in Japan, and since it’s such a popular food prices are much
lower than in non-Asian countries. You can find non-GMO tofu that costs
one-third as much as brands in the United States. In addition to the
sort of firm tofu you could find in most countries, fresh silken tofu is
widely available. Soy milk is sold in every grocery, often in paper
quart-sized milk cartons sold right next to cheap cartons of pre-made
coffee. When I’m in Japan, my mornings always begin with a glass that’s
two-thirds cold coffee and one-third soy milk, with a tablespoon of chia
stirred in.
If you love mushrooms, you’ll adore Japan. You’ll
find all sorts of wonderful varieties at very low prices. Ditto for
sprouts. Fresh seaweed is widely available. You can nearly always find
inexpensive fresh hijiki or wakame seaweed in your
grocery’s refrigerated section. Many markets also carry vegan nori
rolls.
If you can’t read Japanese, the Google Translate app is a
godsend. As I mentioned earlier, most Japanese food seems to
gratuitously contain tiny amounts of fish or pork. I can’t tell you how
many times I’ve pointed my phone’s camera at the ingredients list of
what appeared to be a Level 5 Vegan dish, and had Google Translate reveal bonito flakes or chopped pork.
As
you might expect, Japanese groceries carry a huge assortment of soy
sauces, sometimes an entire aisle’s worth. Unfortunately, about half of
it contains some sort of fish ingredient, so this is one area where
you’ll always want to use your Google Translate app. Kikkoman makes an
“ECOCERT” non-GMO soy sauce for the Japanese market that’s excellent,
albeit more than twice the price of commodity brands.
You won’t be
impressed by the availability of vegan dark chocolate. But apart from
that, the snack offerings in Japan are excellent. There are a great many
vegan potato chip options that seem like a step up from what you can
find in other countries. You can also find excellent rice crackers.
In
contrast to China and especially Thailand, Japan’s top breweries know
what they’re doing. Get yourself some Asahi Prime Rich Beer. It’s cheap
and as good as any US microbrew, and it’s a big step up from
Asahi’s silver-canned flagship product, while costing about 40 percent
less.
The most common alcoholic beverage in Japan prior to
Westernization was sake, which is a wine made from rice rather
than grapes. Alcohol content is similar to wine (around 13 percent,
which is about as high as alcohol gets before most yeasts are killed
off. Distillation is necessary to make beverages higher in alcohol than
wine or sake.) Sake is traditionally served heated, but younger Japanese
people today now favor drinking it refrigerated.
Japan has lower
tariffs on hard liquor than just about any other country, and you can
buy excellent bourbon and scotch for less than what you’d pay in the
United States or Scotland.
Finally, I must mention one of the most innovative grocery offerings I’ve ever come across, and one I’ve found only in Japan. Many supermarkets have a special oven contraption that perfectly roasts sweet potatoes. When they’re ready, the staff puts them in paper bags atop heated rocks. You can buy a roasted sweet potato in a paper bag for just a dollar or two. If your hotel has a rice cooker (and many Japanese hotels do), then you can probably live fairly happily for a few days on freshly-cooked brown rice and sweet potatoes.
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