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The Building Blocks of Japanese Cuisine

111 points by Vigier 10y ago

noelwelsh 10y ago
I wanted to like this article---adding some new ideas to my cooking could be fun---but it quickly descended into food snobbery (how one should eat sushi properly etc.) and I checked out.
- sushisource 10y ago
  Yeah, definitely a bit intense in it's snobbery. This makes sense if you're trying to run a high quality restaurant, or don't mind spending a bunch of money. But, for most home cooks, you're going to be hard-pressed to taste really meaningful differences in most kinds of dishes you'd be making at home.
- SamBam 10y ago
  > (how one should eat sushi properly etc.) Missed this in the article. It only mentions sushi once, at the top, so not sure exactly what you're referring to. I think there is a difference between describing what makes something a quality ingredient ("Well-made miso should taste good. The salt and the fermented beer-like notes should balance each other out") vs telling people how to eat something properly, and I didn't feel like I saw much of the latter.
  - noelwelsh 10y ago
    My bad, it was the section on sashimi I was using as an example: "For dipping sashimi: pour a small pool in the center of the soy sauce dish rather than filling the whole surface of the dish. You can always add more. (And please, no wasabi in the dish. Dab a bit on the slice of sashimi, and dip a corner in the shoyu before eating. The shoyu is used to complement the fish with a hint of salty roundness, but not as a full-on marinade or soak.)"
    - SamBam 10y ago
      I stand corrected.
    - mikekchar 10y ago
      I'm not entirely sure why you think this is snobbery any more than describing any correct cooking techniques. This passage is factually correct (apart from the wasabi - with a caveat). Sushi is usually accompanied with delicate fish and the sushi chef has to assume some things about how the person will eat it. Obviously, you can eat your sushi any way you want just like you can cook an omelette any way you want. But if you want to know what a typical french omelette tastes like in France, you need to know how to prepare it. That the last step in preparation for sushi is left up to the eater does not change anything in my mind. So if you are interested and are willing to set the snobbery issue aside, I will tell you what I know. The reason that shoyu is not added to the fish before it is served is because the salt can ruin the texture of the fish. Actually a surprising amount of fish is pre-salted. When you go to a good sushi restaurant, very frequently the chef will tell you to try something without shoyu first. Some of it is obvious (like shimesaba), but there are times when the chef has decided that the fish needs some pre-treatment which includes salt. In that case you probably don't need any extra salt and he will tell you. Many people don't realise it, but sushi is actually the name of the vinegared rice. Anything with this vinegared rice is sushi. You can have it in a bowl and it is then called sushi meshi. There are many wonderful sushi donburis as well. While it is tempting to think of the value of sushi as being the sashimi perched on top, good sushi is all about the rice. Especially nigiri sushi (where they form in in the hand and place something on top), the way it is formed is crucial to the taste and texture. That being said, it's quite important when eating good sushi not to soak the rice in shoyu. Of course it is up to you what you do, but I don't think it is unusual to have a feeling that good sushi is being ruined any more than having a very high quality steak and completely covering it in catsup (so you can no longer taste the steak you ordered). When you apply the shoyu, the normal technique is to invert the sushi so that the sashimi is pointing mostly down and then to dip the edge into the shoyu. This gives you enough salt to complement the flavour of the fish without overpowering it. It also leaves the sushi (which the chef has spent a lifetime perfecting) intact so that you can take advantage of its quality. Wasabi is a tricky subject. In a very high quality sushi shop the chef will put the correct amount of wasabi between the sushi and the fish. He will watch you eat it and will be able to tell if he has judged the amount correctly. He will adjust accordingly. In a high quality shop, there will be no wasabi offered to be put in your shoyu (in my experience). This is different from eating sashimi. With sashimi (without the sushi), you get a plate of fish that is accompanied with condiments. The condiments can be wasabi, ginger, sliced green oinion, types of seaweed, etc. You put what you like in the shoyu and dip the sashimi into the shoyu. My wife criticises me for making the wrong choices for what I put in my shoyu, but I live with it ;-) If you go to a lower class sushi shop (where they are just shovelling out the sushi), very frequently there will be no wasabi between the sushi and the fish. This is because they have no way to tell how much you will like. In this case it is common to put wasabi in your shoyu. If you go to a very bad sushi place which is essentially using machines to put the sushi together, it's often a good practice to take the fish off, put wasabi in the sushi, dip the fish in shoyu and put it back on the sushi. This is because it is crappily put together in the first place so you might as well take some care in reassembling it. If you go to a very, very bad sushi restaurant, they will often put a lot of wasabi (really hoseradish and mustard) between the sushi and the fish. This is because the fish is off and they are trying to mask the flavour. I don't think it is worth going to these places. Hope this helps in understanding (my understanding of) the reasons for sushi eating guidelines. I hope it doesn't too snobby (except for the recommendation not to eat at places that serve spoiled fish).
- Iv 10y ago
  If you want to cook things that "feel" asian, simply add soy sauche and garlic to anything you fry.
rabboRubble 10y ago
1 item forgotten in that list: fresh, tasty ingredients. Japanese produce and meats are just fussed over to such a degree for which an American consumer has no frame of reference. The fruit and veg tend to be larger, less bruised / browned, and overall of better taste. As ingredients this makes for better food. Perhaps less commercialized farming? IDK. They do spend a larger portion of their household income on groceries, so this is part of the answer. Edit: By "larger" I don't mean serving size, I mean natural size of the fruit and veg. I lived in Japan for 15+ years. The produce there compared to the produce in my US Trader Joe's, was larger. And tastier. I don't know how they did it, because I too would have assumed that larger meant less tasty. Coming back to the US and seeing scrawny fruit was a shock. I wonder if the US producers are sending their largest / best overseas? Or perhaps TJ's and Fred Meyer is buying B class produce?
- hx87 10y ago
  > The fruit and veg tend to be larger This is certainly false, as few heritage fruit and vegetable breeds approach the size of their commercial counterparts. Larger isn't better most of the time though, and smaller versions tend to haver stronger, more intense taste.
  - SamBam 10y ago
    Agree, and this is the case world-over. Coming from Italy, I'm always amazed how large US tomatoes/zucchini/eggplants/etc are, and those big, watery vegetables are almost always tasteless in comparison. I think it's a combination of selecting varieties that produce bigger fruit, as well as waiting longer to pick, so as to produce the largest (most water-heavy) produce.
    - bootload 10y ago
      "Coming from Italy, I'm always amazed how large US tomatoes/zucchini/eggplants/etc are, and those big, watery vegetables are almost always tasteless in comparison." From Melbourne, @SamBam what do think is the reason? My own personal observation, growing both Roma and large Beaf steak variety tomatoes in a home plot, is it's a combination of cultivar and heat. I agree on variety chosen. The commercial varieties are combinations of size, colour, season and preservation. Not necessarily taste. So it maybe the sugar content. Leave the tomatoes in that sun, pick them when they are ripe and the taste is there. Back at the supermarket, picked early and cooled... not so much flavour.
camtarn 10y ago
Might be better phrased as "the building blocks of high-end Japanese cuisine" - as the article says, its recommendations for products are far fancier than even Japanese households use in their day-to-day cooking. But certainly an interesting read - I did not know that Japanese fish sauce other than dashi was even a thing, and the insight into the various varieties of soy sauce was pretty cool.
emodendroket 10y ago
I'm really skeptical of the idea that one salt is at all distinguishable from another.
- hood_syntax 10y ago
  If you're talking naturally occurring salt, there may be noticeable amounts of other minerals or salts besides NaCl that could affect the taste. I understand your skepticism, however.
- crygin 10y ago
  The point of fancy salts is that they're not just NaCl -- sea salts, in particular, have a lot of other trace minerals with their own flavors (to say nothing of the texture -- generally not so important in flavoring a dish as in finishing).
  - NikolaeVarius 10y ago
    The minerals themselves are completely irrelevant in taste. They're extremely trace. Once dissolved, the salt is completely undifferentiatable. The only difference is that if sprinkled on top of food, the size/shape of the salt will change how strong the salt taste is on the tongue and how long it lasts,
    - crygin 10y ago
      Here's an example of one study which found that other minerals play a role in the salty taste perception itself, and also discusses the non-salty volatile flavors present in different sea salts: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-459X.2010.00317.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-459X.2010....
      - guitarbill 10y ago
        Eh, not sure this is a great study. First, n = 9. Also, I find the abstract really obtusely written: > [...] three sea salts had 30% less sodium compared to a reference table salt. [...] Salt solutions were evaluated on an equivalent weight and on an equivalent sodium content basis. [...] Salty taste intensity on an equivalent sodium basis was not different (P < 0.05), but time-intensity profiles for salty taste were distinct (P < 0.05). So what they're saying is, some sea salts have extra minerals which in effect lowers the sodium content per gram. But if you compare a sea salt solution to a table salt solution with equal sodium, they taste equally as intense, but sometimes for different lengths of time. So in other words, you need more sea salt by weight to achieve the same intensity as table salt, but they didn't want to say that. EDIT: So the time-based intensity seems to mirror what NikolaeVarius said. And then the "Practical Implications": > There has been some controversy that sea salt may be healthier than table salts due to the presence of other minerals. This research demonstrates that sea salts harvested from different parts of the world have different mineral content and time-intensity profiles of salty taste. Due to the different time intensity profiles, it may be possible to use less of some sea salts to obtain the same salty taste as a food containing traditional salt but having a lower sodium content. Unfortunately, I can't read the whole article because paywall, so I can't evaluate how big the time-intensity effect is. For the "salty taste" intensity, they've shown this isn't true. And honestly, that wording wouldn't even fly on Wikipeda, "[t]here has been some controversy". Wow. (Also interesting that the two authors are both called Drake.)
wyager 10y ago
This article falls into the wine critic trap of using meaningless terms like "round" to describe flavor. If you want an example of really high-quality science-based treatment of cooking, take a look at Modernist Cuisine. Minimal bullshit, plenty of chemistry.
- beat 10y ago
  And Modernist Cuisine falls into the usual failings of western reductionism - if we can't measure it, it doesn't exist. That's nonsense. It reminds me of back when I used to do homebrew hi-fi (influenced by the Japanese, naturally). Once you start really listening rather than measuring, you start seeing the flaws of a measurement-driven system. For example, hi-fi equipment is often marketed in terms of THD (total harmonic distortion). Is it actually relevant? No. But it is easy to measure. Measuring the harmonic content of a 1khz sine wave is even less musically relevant than measuring how well a car drives at exactly 60mph in a straight line. It doesn't take into account frequency range, balance, dynamics, phase shift, intermodulation, back EMF from speakers (think about it - a speaker is not only a motor, it's also an alternator, that absorbs mechanical sound energy in its suspension and spits it back down the line as AC energy greatly delayed and distorted from its original form, and the amp outputs have to absorb it), etc. THD is a nonsense measurement. But every manufacturer brags about their THD specs. That's what happens when you use a measurement-driven, reductionist approach to perception. You value what you measure, whether or not what you measure explains what you observe.
  - xj9 10y ago
    You are measuring things too. If there wasn't a physical phenomena happening you wouldn't experience anything! You are using different tools, but you are doing the same thing as us "reductionist westerners".
    - CuriouslyC 10y ago
      While I don't think it was stated very clearly, the impression I got from the grandparent poster was that in many cases metrics actually distract from the thing we actually care about, in this case "how does it sound?" You can't really represent that as a number, because in one case "rich resonant lows and a warm sound" might be what you're after, while in another "crisp, distinct highs, and extremely high fidelity" could be preferable, and it is the gestalt that produces the aesthetic quality.
cpdean 10y ago
you guys, japanese culture is ~omakase~
jnordwick 10y ago
Alternate Title: The Building Blocks of Japanese Food Snobbery
- contingencies 10y ago
  ... in a California clickbait context
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
draw_down 10y ago
I really enjoyed this, thank you.
state 10y ago
As someone who has been cooking Japanese food at home for years, it's fun to see this on the front page. One thing worth noticing is that most of the items discussed in this article are pretty tough to find in the US — even online, unless you read Japanese (which I don't). Even here in California at your local Japanese grocery it's quite tough. Finding a good source for Gyosho seems nearly impossible. I've been dreaming about opening a Rainbow grocery or Bi Rite quality Japanese grocery store. Don't see myself having the time for that in the near future... On the other hand — the quality of produce from Hikari Farms [0,1] is really fantastic. And Good Eggs will deliver it to my door! 0 - https://www.ccof.org/members/hikari-farms-llc https://www.ccof.org/members/hikari-farms-llc 1 - https://www.goodeggs.com/hikarifarms https://www.goodeggs.com/hikarifarms
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Have you tried Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley? (I don’t know much about Japanese cooking, so I couldn’t advise you about specific ingredients.)
  - state 10y ago
    Somehow, no! Will check it out. Thanks!
- mc32 10y ago
  Of all places, it appears Columbus OH has a pretty decent Japanese supermarket[1]. They have things even "Japanese" supermarkets in California don't have. To wit: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/11/476198119/a-surprising-japanese-presence-in-central-ohio http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/11/476198119/a-s... [1]http://tensukemarket.com/ http://tensukemarket.com/
dekobon 10y ago
> The finest artisanal Japanese soy sauces are becoming known abroad as shoyu. Good soy sauce is being called the Japanese word for soy sauce - shoyu (which includes good and bad soy sauce)? If this is true, let's not encourage this language to spread. This is too confusing.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  But you're okay with calling it "artisanal"? I'd much rather have English steal yet another foreign word than to beat a word out of its existing vocabulary into meaningless advertising nulls.
  - dekobon 10y ago
    Well, it is kind of like using the word ketchup to refer to only premium ketchups in some other language. Whenever a person who speaks that language says they enjoy ketchup, you wonder - what are they talking about. As for artisanal, if there isn't an apprentice program for producing the good, then it probably isn't artisanal. Interestingly, by this definition there are artisanal soy sauces.
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      Funny enough, the word ketchup comes from Southeast Asian/southern Chinese fermented fish sauce. After it became popular among European sailors after 1600, the word was coopted to refer to a wide variety of different sauces, because Europeans didn’t have any idea how to make the original sauce. The modern American ketchup is a descendent of a descendent of a cheap European knockoff of expensive imported Chinese fish sauce. :-) This lecture is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYwUh1Hdho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYwUh1Hdho
      - jnordwick 10y ago
        OMG! He speaks the truth! http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24530/what-is-the-etymology-of-the-word-ketchup http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24530/what-is-the...
huac 10y ago
Something I recently found out is that nearly all wasabi in America (and the rest of the world) is fake - it's all horseradish and food coloring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasabi#Surrogates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasabi#Surrogates
- gkanai 10y ago
  Indeed. Unless they are grating the wasabi in front of you, you should assume it is colored horseradish. (Unless you're at a 2 or 3 Michelin-starred sushi restaurant in Japan- then it's real wasabi.)
  - mikekchar 10y ago
    Real wasabi is amazing. I live in Shizuoka prefecture, so I have ready access to it. In Japanese they call it "hon wasabi" (or root wasabi). The taste varies considerably over the season, but in the winter it is especially sweet. I often eat it on its own (just grated) as an accompaniment to beer. It is not nearly as hot as the horseradish/mustard substitutes, though most Japanese people think I'm crazy until I invite them to try it. In Shizuoka, anyway, hon wasabi is not so expensive. You can get a root from between $5-10 US. That's enough for probably 10 servings. If you are at any decent sushi restaurant/izakaya you will be given hon wasabi here. Even at cheap kaiten (conveyor-belt) sushi restaurants you can usually order it for a small price.
- Iv 10y ago
  In Japan too.
Iv 10y ago
Ok, I'll give you a trick if you want to make people believe you can cook asian food: fry stuff (anything, really, can be meat, pasta, mushroom, rice, potatoes, fish) and add soy sauce and garlic. Cooked garlic and soy sauce smells good, tastes good and is the "asian" taste we identify as westerners.
zumu 10y ago
Not enough mention of dashi, which is in everything. This article makes it sound like it's only relevant when sold as a mixture with soy sauce. Interesting information and anecdotes, but far from an overview of the 'Building Blocks of Japanese Cuisine'.

111 points by Vigier 10y ago

I wanted to like this article---adding some new ideas to my cooking could be fun---but it quickly descended into food snobbery (how one should eat sushi properly etc.) and I checked out.

sushisource 10y ago
Yeah, definitely a bit intense in it's snobbery. This makes sense if you're trying to run a high quality restaurant, or don't mind spending a bunch of money. But, for most home cooks, you're going to be hard-pressed to taste really meaningful differences in most kinds of dishes you'd be making at home.
SamBam 10y ago
> (how one should eat sushi properly etc.) Missed this in the article. It only mentions sushi once, at the top, so not sure exactly what you're referring to. I think there is a difference between describing what makes something a quality ingredient ("Well-made miso should taste good. The salt and the fermented beer-like notes should balance each other out") vs telling people how to eat something properly, and I didn't feel like I saw much of the latter.
- noelwelsh 10y ago
  My bad, it was the section on sashimi I was using as an example: "For dipping sashimi: pour a small pool in the center of the soy sauce dish rather than filling the whole surface of the dish. You can always add more. (And please, no wasabi in the dish. Dab a bit on the slice of sashimi, and dip a corner in the shoyu before eating. The shoyu is used to complement the fish with a hint of salty roundness, but not as a full-on marinade or soak.)"
  - SamBam 10y ago
    I stand corrected.
  - mikekchar 10y ago
    I'm not entirely sure why you think this is snobbery any more than describing any correct cooking techniques. This passage is factually correct (apart from the wasabi - with a caveat). Sushi is usually accompanied with delicate fish and the sushi chef has to assume some things about how the person will eat it. Obviously, you can eat your sushi any way you want just like you can cook an omelette any way you want. But if you want to know what a typical french omelette tastes like in France, you need to know how to prepare it. That the last step in preparation for sushi is left up to the eater does not change anything in my mind. So if you are interested and are willing to set the snobbery issue aside, I will tell you what I know. The reason that shoyu is not added to the fish before it is served is because the salt can ruin the texture of the fish. Actually a surprising amount of fish is pre-salted. When you go to a good sushi restaurant, very frequently the chef will tell you to try something without shoyu first. Some of it is obvious (like shimesaba), but there are times when the chef has decided that the fish needs some pre-treatment which includes salt. In that case you probably don't need any extra salt and he will tell you. Many people don't realise it, but sushi is actually the name of the vinegared rice. Anything with this vinegared rice is sushi. You can have it in a bowl and it is then called sushi meshi. There are many wonderful sushi donburis as well. While it is tempting to think of the value of sushi as being the sashimi perched on top, good sushi is all about the rice. Especially nigiri sushi (where they form in in the hand and place something on top), the way it is formed is crucial to the taste and texture. That being said, it's quite important when eating good sushi not to soak the rice in shoyu. Of course it is up to you what you do, but I don't think it is unusual to have a feeling that good sushi is being ruined any more than having a very high quality steak and completely covering it in catsup (so you can no longer taste the steak you ordered). When you apply the shoyu, the normal technique is to invert the sushi so that the sashimi is pointing mostly down and then to dip the edge into the shoyu. This gives you enough salt to complement the flavour of the fish without overpowering it. It also leaves the sushi (which the chef has spent a lifetime perfecting) intact so that you can take advantage of its quality. Wasabi is a tricky subject. In a very high quality sushi shop the chef will put the correct amount of wasabi between the sushi and the fish. He will watch you eat it and will be able to tell if he has judged the amount correctly. He will adjust accordingly. In a high quality shop, there will be no wasabi offered to be put in your shoyu (in my experience). This is different from eating sashimi. With sashimi (without the sushi), you get a plate of fish that is accompanied with condiments. The condiments can be wasabi, ginger, sliced green oinion, types of seaweed, etc. You put what you like in the shoyu and dip the sashimi into the shoyu. My wife criticises me for making the wrong choices for what I put in my shoyu, but I live with it ;-) If you go to a lower class sushi shop (where they are just shovelling out the sushi), very frequently there will be no wasabi between the sushi and the fish. This is because they have no way to tell how much you will like. In this case it is common to put wasabi in your shoyu. If you go to a very bad sushi place which is essentially using machines to put the sushi together, it's often a good practice to take the fish off, put wasabi in the sushi, dip the fish in shoyu and put it back on the sushi. This is because it is crappily put together in the first place so you might as well take some care in reassembling it. If you go to a very, very bad sushi restaurant, they will often put a lot of wasabi (really hoseradish and mustard) between the sushi and the fish. This is because the fish is off and they are trying to mask the flavour. I don't think it is worth going to these places. Hope this helps in understanding (my understanding of) the reasons for sushi eating guidelines. I hope it doesn't too snobby (except for the recommendation not to eat at places that serve spoiled fish).
Iv 10y ago
If you want to cook things that "feel" asian, simply add soy sauche and garlic to anything you fry.

rabboRubble 10y ago

1 item forgotten in that list: fresh, tasty ingredients. Japanese produce and meats are just fussed over to such a degree for which an American consumer has no frame of reference. The fruit and veg tend to be larger, less bruised / browned, and overall of better taste. As ingredients this makes for better food. Perhaps less commercialized farming? IDK. They do spend a larger portion of their household income on groceries, so this is part of the answer. Edit: By "larger" I don't mean serving size, I mean natural size of the fruit and veg. I lived in Japan for 15+ years. The produce there compared to the produce in my US Trader Joe's, was larger. And tastier. I don't know how they did it, because I too would have assumed that larger meant less tasty. Coming back to the US and seeing scrawny fruit was a shock. I wonder if the US producers are sending their largest / best overseas? Or perhaps TJ's and Fred Meyer is buying B class produce?

hx87 10y ago
> The fruit and veg tend to be larger This is certainly false, as few heritage fruit and vegetable breeds approach the size of their commercial counterparts. Larger isn't better most of the time though, and smaller versions tend to haver stronger, more intense taste.
- SamBam 10y ago
  Agree, and this is the case world-over. Coming from Italy, I'm always amazed how large US tomatoes/zucchini/eggplants/etc are, and those big, watery vegetables are almost always tasteless in comparison. I think it's a combination of selecting varieties that produce bigger fruit, as well as waiting longer to pick, so as to produce the largest (most water-heavy) produce.
  - bootload 10y ago
    "Coming from Italy, I'm always amazed how large US tomatoes/zucchini/eggplants/etc are, and those big, watery vegetables are almost always tasteless in comparison." From Melbourne, @SamBam what do think is the reason? My own personal observation, growing both Roma and large Beaf steak variety tomatoes in a home plot, is it's a combination of cultivar and heat. I agree on variety chosen. The commercial varieties are combinations of size, colour, season and preservation. Not necessarily taste. So it maybe the sugar content. Leave the tomatoes in that sun, pick them when they are ripe and the taste is there. Back at the supermarket, picked early and cooled... not so much flavour.

camtarn 10y ago

Might be better phrased as "the building blocks of high-end Japanese cuisine" - as the article says, its recommendations for products are far fancier than even Japanese households use in their day-to-day cooking. But certainly an interesting read - I did not know that Japanese fish sauce other than dashi was even a thing, and the insight into the various varieties of soy sauce was pretty cool.

emodendroket 10y ago

I'm really skeptical of the idea that one salt is at all distinguishable from another.

hood_syntax 10y ago
If you're talking naturally occurring salt, there may be noticeable amounts of other minerals or salts besides NaCl that could affect the taste. I understand your skepticism, however.
crygin 10y ago
The point of fancy salts is that they're not just NaCl -- sea salts, in particular, have a lot of other trace minerals with their own flavors (to say nothing of the texture -- generally not so important in flavoring a dish as in finishing).
- NikolaeVarius 10y ago
  The minerals themselves are completely irrelevant in taste. They're extremely trace. Once dissolved, the salt is completely undifferentiatable. The only difference is that if sprinkled on top of food, the size/shape of the salt will change how strong the salt taste is on the tongue and how long it lasts,
  - crygin 10y ago
    Here's an example of one study which found that other minerals play a role in the salty taste perception itself, and also discusses the non-salty volatile flavors present in different sea salts: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-459X.2010.00317.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-459X.2010....
    - guitarbill 10y ago
      Eh, not sure this is a great study. First, n = 9. Also, I find the abstract really obtusely written: > [...] three sea salts had 30% less sodium compared to a reference table salt. [...] Salt solutions were evaluated on an equivalent weight and on an equivalent sodium content basis. [...] Salty taste intensity on an equivalent sodium basis was not different (P < 0.05), but time-intensity profiles for salty taste were distinct (P < 0.05). So what they're saying is, some sea salts have extra minerals which in effect lowers the sodium content per gram. But if you compare a sea salt solution to a table salt solution with equal sodium, they taste equally as intense, but sometimes for different lengths of time. So in other words, you need more sea salt by weight to achieve the same intensity as table salt, but they didn't want to say that. EDIT: So the time-based intensity seems to mirror what NikolaeVarius said. And then the "Practical Implications": > There has been some controversy that sea salt may be healthier than table salts due to the presence of other minerals. This research demonstrates that sea salts harvested from different parts of the world have different mineral content and time-intensity profiles of salty taste. Due to the different time intensity profiles, it may be possible to use less of some sea salts to obtain the same salty taste as a food containing traditional salt but having a lower sodium content. Unfortunately, I can't read the whole article because paywall, so I can't evaluate how big the time-intensity effect is. For the "salty taste" intensity, they've shown this isn't true. And honestly, that wording wouldn't even fly on Wikipeda, "[t]here has been some controversy". Wow. (Also interesting that the two authors are both called Drake.)

wyager 10y ago

This article falls into the wine critic trap of using meaningless terms like "round" to describe flavor. If you want an example of really high-quality science-based treatment of cooking, take a look at Modernist Cuisine. Minimal bullshit, plenty of chemistry.

beat 10y ago
And Modernist Cuisine falls into the usual failings of western reductionism - if we can't measure it, it doesn't exist. That's nonsense. It reminds me of back when I used to do homebrew hi-fi (influenced by the Japanese, naturally). Once you start really listening rather than measuring, you start seeing the flaws of a measurement-driven system. For example, hi-fi equipment is often marketed in terms of THD (total harmonic distortion). Is it actually relevant? No. But it is easy to measure. Measuring the harmonic content of a 1khz sine wave is even less musically relevant than measuring how well a car drives at exactly 60mph in a straight line. It doesn't take into account frequency range, balance, dynamics, phase shift, intermodulation, back EMF from speakers (think about it - a speaker is not only a motor, it's also an alternator, that absorbs mechanical sound energy in its suspension and spits it back down the line as AC energy greatly delayed and distorted from its original form, and the amp outputs have to absorb it), etc. THD is a nonsense measurement. But every manufacturer brags about their THD specs. That's what happens when you use a measurement-driven, reductionist approach to perception. You value what you measure, whether or not what you measure explains what you observe.
- xj9 10y ago
  You are measuring things too. If there wasn't a physical phenomena happening you wouldn't experience anything! You are using different tools, but you are doing the same thing as us "reductionist westerners".
  - CuriouslyC 10y ago
    While I don't think it was stated very clearly, the impression I got from the grandparent poster was that in many cases metrics actually distract from the thing we actually care about, in this case "how does it sound?" You can't really represent that as a number, because in one case "rich resonant lows and a warm sound" might be what you're after, while in another "crisp, distinct highs, and extremely high fidelity" could be preferable, and it is the gestalt that produces the aesthetic quality.

cpdean 10y ago

you guys, japanese culture is ~omakase~

jnordwick 10y ago

Alternate Title: The Building Blocks of Japanese Food Snobbery

contingencies 10y ago
... in a California clickbait context

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

draw_down 10y ago

I really enjoyed this, thank you.

state 10y ago

As someone who has been cooking Japanese food at home for years, it's fun to see this on the front page. One thing worth noticing is that most of the items discussed in this article are pretty tough to find in the US — even online, unless you read Japanese (which I don't). Even here in California at your local Japanese grocery it's quite tough. Finding a good source for Gyosho seems nearly impossible. I've been dreaming about opening a Rainbow grocery or Bi Rite quality Japanese grocery store. Don't see myself having the time for that in the near future... On the other hand — the quality of produce from Hikari Farms [0,1] is really fantastic. And Good Eggs will deliver it to my door! 0 - https://www.ccof.org/members/hikari-farms-llc https://www.ccof.org/members/hikari-farms-llc 1 - https://www.goodeggs.com/hikarifarms https://www.goodeggs.com/hikarifarms

jacobolus 10y ago
Have you tried Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley? (I don’t know much about Japanese cooking, so I couldn’t advise you about specific ingredients.)
- state 10y ago
  Somehow, no! Will check it out. Thanks!
mc32 10y ago
Of all places, it appears Columbus OH has a pretty decent Japanese supermarket[1]. They have things even "Japanese" supermarkets in California don't have. To wit: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/11/476198119/a-surprising-japanese-presence-in-central-ohio http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/11/476198119/a-s... [1]http://tensukemarket.com/ http://tensukemarket.com/

dekobon 10y ago

> The finest artisanal Japanese soy sauces are becoming known abroad as shoyu. Good soy sauce is being called the Japanese word for soy sauce - shoyu (which includes good and bad soy sauce)? If this is true, let's not encourage this language to spread. This is too confusing.

logfromblammo 10y ago
But you're okay with calling it "artisanal"? I'd much rather have English steal yet another foreign word than to beat a word out of its existing vocabulary into meaningless advertising nulls.
- dekobon 10y ago
  Well, it is kind of like using the word ketchup to refer to only premium ketchups in some other language. Whenever a person who speaks that language says they enjoy ketchup, you wonder - what are they talking about. As for artisanal, if there isn't an apprentice program for producing the good, then it probably isn't artisanal. Interestingly, by this definition there are artisanal soy sauces.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Funny enough, the word ketchup comes from Southeast Asian/southern Chinese fermented fish sauce. After it became popular among European sailors after 1600, the word was coopted to refer to a wide variety of different sauces, because Europeans didn’t have any idea how to make the original sauce. The modern American ketchup is a descendent of a descendent of a cheap European knockoff of expensive imported Chinese fish sauce. :-) This lecture is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYwUh1Hdho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYwUh1Hdho
    - jnordwick 10y ago
      OMG! He speaks the truth! http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24530/what-is-the-etymology-of-the-word-ketchup http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24530/what-is-the...

huac 10y ago

Something I recently found out is that nearly all wasabi in America (and the rest of the world) is fake - it's all horseradish and food coloring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasabi#Surrogates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasabi#Surrogates

gkanai 10y ago
Indeed. Unless they are grating the wasabi in front of you, you should assume it is colored horseradish. (Unless you're at a 2 or 3 Michelin-starred sushi restaurant in Japan- then it's real wasabi.)
- mikekchar 10y ago
  Real wasabi is amazing. I live in Shizuoka prefecture, so I have ready access to it. In Japanese they call it "hon wasabi" (or root wasabi). The taste varies considerably over the season, but in the winter it is especially sweet. I often eat it on its own (just grated) as an accompaniment to beer. It is not nearly as hot as the horseradish/mustard substitutes, though most Japanese people think I'm crazy until I invite them to try it. In Shizuoka, anyway, hon wasabi is not so expensive. You can get a root from between $5-10 US. That's enough for probably 10 servings. If you are at any decent sushi restaurant/izakaya you will be given hon wasabi here. Even at cheap kaiten (conveyor-belt) sushi restaurants you can usually order it for a small price.
Iv 10y ago
In Japan too.

Iv 10y ago

Ok, I'll give you a trick if you want to make people believe you can cook asian food: fry stuff (anything, really, can be meat, pasta, mushroom, rice, potatoes, fish) and add soy sauce and garlic. Cooked garlic and soy sauce smells good, tastes good and is the "asian" taste we identify as westerners.

zumu 10y ago

Not enough mention of dashi, which is in everything. This article makes it sound like it's only relevant when sold as a mixture with soy sauce. Interesting information and anecdotes, but far from an overview of the 'Building Blocks of Japanese Cuisine'.