Japanese food is beloved for countless reasons: It’s textural, it’s colorful, its simplicity lets the ingredients shine, and it’s plated as beautifully as a work of art. Some of the most readily available Japanese dishes here in the U.S. include sushi, ramen noodles, and stir fry, but to expand into the cuisine further, your best bet is to make the dishes yourself. And to do that, you need the proper ingredients, books, and tools. We’ve collected 15 items that will help you step up your Japanese cooking game without leaving your kitchen. Itadakimasu!
All products featured in this story are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Ingredients
Kewpie mayo
A typical Japanese pantry is stocked with a different assemblage than that of the average American—miso paste, soy sauce, rice vinegar, dashi, mirin, and wasabi among them. But one ingredient reigns supreme for snacking, which is Kewpie mayo. Superior to basic Hellman's because of the delicious deep-yellow yolked Japanese eggs, sweet rice vinegar, and umami-making MSG within, it comes in a red squeezable bottle and can be spread on sandwiches, rolled into sushi, and used as a dipping sauce for fried chicken and shrimp.
Buy now: $8, kewpieshop.com
Kikusui Sake Junmai Ginjo
As the French and Italians use wine for both drinking and cooking, so do the Japanese with sake. The fermented rice wine plays a key role in marinades, stocks, and sauces, and deepens and complicates the flavor of any dish. It’s not necessary to cook with an expensive sake, and the fresh, dry, fruity selection here is great for food and drink alike.
Buy now: $19, shop.lavinotheque.us or minibardelivery.com
Kikkoman panko
Panko has infinite uses, and one of them is to make the coating for homemade Japanese fried chicken, shrimp, and pork cutlets. Panko is like bread crumbs, but better—airier, crispier, crunchier, flakier. It’s finely shaved in slivers off of crustless white bread, and can be found in most grocery stores.
Buy now: $2, target.com
Noodles
Noodles are inseparable from Japanese cooking. They’re the foundation of many delicious meals, come in a range of shapes, flavors, and textures, and are simple to make yourself. Let’s start with one of the best-known: ramen. You can make it on a college budget with only water and a microwave, or you can splurge on a $20-plus bowl at a place like Ichiran in NYC. For an in-between option, top an at-home bowl with a soft-boiled egg, dried nori, or pork. Other delicious noodles include soba, thin buckwheat noodles often served cold, and udon, which are thicker and often served spicy.
Buy now: Soba noodles, $3, igourmet.com; Udon noodles, $3, igourmet.com; WeiChuan organic lanzhou ramen, $7, asianmart.com
Nori
Another ingredient you simply must have on hand is nori, an edible form of seaweed (red algae, specifically), in both toasted and plain forms. Just like the foods above, its versatility is impressive. It can be snacked on like chips, serve as the wrapper for a hand-roll filled with salmon, thrown atop a bowl of ramen noodles, or crushed and sprinkled over rice for a salty seasoning.
Buy now: Toasted sushi nori, $4, thrivemarket.com
Books
Japanese Farm Food by Nancy Singleton Hachisu
The makings of a memorable meal don’t start in the kitchen, or even the grocery store. They start on the farm. Japanese Farm Food is much more than a cookbook—it details life, love, community, and family on a rural Japanese farm, and tells a story in which food is the foundation of all of those things. The recipes in this book are unlike what you would find in a Japanese restaurant in the States. Instead they are simple dishes like plum sorbet, pork belly simmered in okar, and carrots pickled with kombu and dried squid.
Buy now: $50, barnesandnoble.com or $33, amazon.com
World of Nobu by Nobuyuki Matsuhisa
Everyone knows Nobu. The luxe Japanese-Peruvian restaurants, with locations everywhere from New York to Hong Kong, are world-renowned and have a vast celebrity following. In this coffee-table-cookbook fusion, readers get a glossy, colorful inside look at Nobu’s signature dishes like the miso black cod and king crab with ikura sauce, plus profiles of the restaurants’ chefs.
Buy now: $70, barnesandnoble.com or $45, amazon.com
Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture by Matt Goulding
To take a culinary sojourn to Japan without leaving your apartment, Rice, Noodle, Fish, is the ideal book to curl up with. The author takes the reader on a 5,000-mile journey through seven parts of Japan, including Kyoto, Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka, stopping at teahouses, noodle shops, street carts, and the restaurants of esteemed sushi chefs along the way.
Buy now: $38, barnesandnoble.com or $23, amazon.com
Kitchenware
Senshi knife set
If there’s one thing Japanese chefs are known for, it’s precision. And to uphold that virtue, they boast incredible knife skills, using the sharpest tools available and wielding them with grace. Kamikoto’s Senshi Knife Set is the perfect starter kit for those aiming to improve their deftness in the kitchen. It comes with both a 10-inch chef’s knife for cutting meats and dicing large vegetables, and a 5.5-inch utility knife for detail work. Their corrosion-resistant, durable steel blades are manufactured in Honshu, Japan. The set also comes with an elegant wooden display stand, which lets you make your best equipment a focal point of your kitchen counter.
Buy now: $289, kamikoto.com
Bamboo chopstick set
Chopsticks do much more than your regular utensil or cutlery item. You can use them like you would use tongs or a spatula, but to handle smaller pieces of food with greater—here’s the key word again—precision. Examples include frying small shrimps or florets of broccoli, gently flipping a delicate omelette, or even grabbing the last pickle stuck at the bottom of the jar. This inexpensive, three-piece bamboo cooking set comes with a 10-inch, 11-inch, and 13-inch pair.
Buy now: Bamboo cooking chopstick set, $1.20, mtckitchen.com
Buy now: Twisted bamboo chopstick set, $12, surlatable.com
Bamboo steamer
Many Americans knock steamed food, citing blandness, but they could stand to learn from the Japanese on this front. The gentlest technique possible, steaming lets the flavors of vegetables, dumplings, and fish alike stand alone. It’s one of the healthiest methods of cooking too, requiring no oil or butter and preserving more nutrients than roasting or boiling. This bamboo basket steamer from Sur La Table stacks two layers within, allowing for efficiency in the kitchen.
Buy now: $25, surlatable.com
SushiQuik Super Easy Sushi Making Kit
Yes, you can probably get decent sushi delivery wherever you are. But, just like another to-go food we all know and love (pizza), the act of making it yourself is a joy in and of itself. To do so you need a paddle and spreader, for handling sticky rice, and a mat, for rolling. This kit comes with all of that, plus a square frame to help measure rice accurately and proportionally, and a cutter, for neatly and evenly sliced rolls. Best of all, the whole thing is dishwasher-safe.
Buy now: $25, amazon.com
Mid-Century Japanese hand-painted plates
This line-up may focus on Japanese food, but we can’t resist throwing in some Japanese design—it’s too gorgeous a category not to touch on, and no kitchen is complete without some special tableware. The online interior design marketplace, Chairish, has a beautiful, curated selection of vintage and antique Japanese plates for purchase, from gold leaf platters to porcelain painted with koi fish. The plate set shown above features a painted golden sunset and a purple border.
Buy now: $106 for a set of six, chairish.com
White teapot
In Japan, you can find tea in restaurants, convenience stores, kiosks, and vending machines alike. And the country’s tea ceremonies, which often use matcha green tea, are a sacred custom rooted in Zen Buddhism. Elevate your own personal relationship with tea by bringing an elegant teapot into your home. This one’s classic white finish, curved spout, and bamboo handle make it a prized possession.
Buy now: $12, korin.com
... And more
BUILT Bento Lunch Set with Getaway Tote
It’s no secret that the Japanese have a propensity for neatness, as is evident in their symmetrical, identical, mess-free sushi rolls and minimalist furniture alike. This sense of order can be incredibly satisfying (cleanliness is next to godliness, etc.), and is also found in the bento box. This reusable plastic one, which comes with a lunch bag, will make you want to bring your lunch to work every single day. It has a removable partition to create a second compartment, a reusable fork, and a rubber band to keep the box securely shut.
Buy now: $85, williams-sonoma.com
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