What’s in a Japanese Fridge?

Restaurant food tells you what a country is proud of. The fridge tells you what it eats.

An ordinary Japanese household fridge is not full of the things on an izakaya menu. It is full of fermented seasonings, vegetables, tofu, eggs and small quantities of fish — and the everyday cooking that comes out of it is simpler, lighter and more repetitive than any visitor would guess from a week of eating out.

The door: seasonings

Japanese home cooking runs on a small set of fermented liquids, and once you know them the whole cuisine becomes legible.

Shoyu (soy sauce) — and usually more than one. Koikuchi is the standard dark version. Usukuchi, from Kansai, is lighter in colour and saltier, used where you do not want to darken the dish. Some households also keep tamari or a ponzu citrus-soy blend.

Mirin — sweet rice cooking wine. Provides sweetness and gloss. In almost everything simmered.

Ryorishu — cooking sake. Not drinking sake; it is salted so it cannot be sold as drink.

Miso — fermented soybean paste, usually one tub, sometimes two. White (shiro) is sweeter and lighter, red (aka) is stronger and saltier, and Nagoya’s hatcho is dark and dense. Regional loyalty is fierce.

Rice vinegar, sesame oil, and a jar of dashi stock — increasingly instant granules or a liquid concentrate rather than shavings and kelp, which is a genuine shift over one generation.

Kewpie mayonnaise — made with egg yolks only and rice vinegar, and considered by many cooks worldwide to be better than the alternatives. In a soft squeezable bottle with a star-shaped nozzle.

Tubes of ginger, garlic and wasabi — near-universal, and a small quiet admission that grating things every day is tedious.

The main compartment

Eggs. Japanese eggs are produced to a salmonella-control standard that makes them safe to eat raw, which is why tamago kake gohan — a raw egg stirred into hot rice with soy sauce — is a normal breakfast.

Tofu. Silken (kinugoshi) and firm (momen), in sealed water-filled packs. Cheap, roughly 40–100 JPY, and eaten several times a week.

Natto. Fermented soybeans, in a small polystyrene tray with a sachet of mustard and a sachet of sauce. Sticky, powerfully smelling, and eaten by a large minority for breakfast. Consumption is markedly higher in eastern Japan than in Kansai, where a good many people will tell you they cannot stand it.

Fish. A fillet or two of salmon or mackerel for grilling. Bought for that day or the next.

Pickles (tsukemono). Several kinds. They are not a garnish — a proper meal has rice, soup, a main and pickles, and the pickles are one of the four.

Kamaboko and chikuwa — processed fish cake in various forms, for hotpots and lunchboxes.

Milk, in a carton, mostly for coffee and for children.

The vegetable drawer

Busier than in most Western fridges, and the reason Japanese home cooking is as light as it is.

Constant: spring onion, ginger, daikon radish, cabbage, carrot, onion.

Seasonal: bamboo shoots in spring, cucumber and aubergine in summer, sweet potato and mushrooms in autumn, hakusai (napa cabbage) in winter for hotpots.

Herbs: shiso (perilla), mitsuba, myoga. Used in small quantities as a finish rather than as a base.

What is not there

Instructive by absence.

Cheese — a small amount of processed slices, at most. Dairy arrived in Japan only in the late nineteenth century and remains marginal in cooking.

Butter — a little, for toast. Cooking uses oil.

Bread — if present, thick-sliced white shokupan, four or six slices to a bag, eaten toasted for breakfast.

Red meat in quantity — pork is the most-used meat by far, in thin slices. Beef is a treat.

Olive oil, pasta sauce, cold cuts, salad dressing — increasingly present in younger households, largely absent from older ones.

What actually gets cooked

The everyday dinner is more standardised than restaurant menus suggest. The formal name is ichiju-sansai — one soup, three dishes — with rice.

A Tuesday:

• Rice, cooked in a rice cooker that was set that morning
• Miso soup with tofu and wakame
• A grilled salted mackerel, or ginger pork (shogayaki)
• A simmered vegetable dish (nimono), often made the day before
• Pickles

The rotation in most households is small: curry rice, ginger pork, hamburg steak, grilled fish, nikujaga (meat and potato stew), yakisoba, gyoza, and a hotpot in winter. Japanese curry — thick, mild, sweet, from a block of roux — is one of the most-cooked home dishes in the country and bears no resemblance to Indian food.

Hotpot (nabe) is the winter default: a portable burner on the table, a pot of stock, and everyone cooking as they go. It is quick, cheap, communal, and warms a room that has no central heating.

→ Where do Japanese people actually live? Inside a normal apartment

The rice cooker

The most important appliance in a Japanese kitchen, and often the most expensive — a good one costs 30,000–80,000 JPY and is a considered purchase.

It has a timer, so rice is set the night before and ready at breakfast, and a keep-warm function that holds it through the day. Higher-end models use induction heating and pressure, and the marketing around them is entirely serious.

Shopping

Small and frequent. Fridges are small, kitchens are small, and freshness is highly valued, so many households shop every day or two rather than weekly.

The supermarket after 7pm is a distinct commercial environment. Prepared food and fish get discount stickers of 20%, then 30%, then half price, and there is an informal etiquette about hovering near the person applying them.

Depachika — department store basement food halls — are the top end: counters from famous restaurants, immaculate produce, and gift-grade fruit under glass.

The bento

Millions of packed lunches are made every morning, and they are a small daily craft: rice, a protein, a vegetable, something pickled, arranged in a compartmented box so that nothing leaks and it looks composed cold.

Kyaraben — character bento made to look like animals or cartoon figures — is a competitive parental subgenre that has attracted commentary in Japan itself about the pressure it places on mothers.

What this explains about eating out

Two things.

Restaurant food is not home food. Ramen, sushi, tempura and yakitori are things you go out for, made by specialists. Home cooking is rice, soup, fish and vegetables, and much lighter.

The seasoning set is the cuisine. Soy, mirin, sake, miso, dashi. Almost every Japanese dish you eat is a different ratio of the same five things — which is why an unfamiliar dish so often tastes recognisably Japanese.

Questions people actually ask

Do Japanese people really eat natto?

A substantial minority eat it regularly, mostly for breakfast, and consumption is far higher in eastern Japan than in Kansai. Plenty of Japanese people dislike it as much as visitors do.

Is it safe to eat raw eggs?

In Japan, yes. Eggs are produced under salmonella-control standards specifically because raw consumption is normal. Do not assume the same of eggs elsewhere.

Why is there so little cheese?

Dairy arrived only in the late nineteenth century and never entered the cooking repertoire. It appears in Western-influenced dishes and as a snack, not as an ingredient.

Is home cooking healthier than eating out?

Generally yes — lighter, more vegetables, less oil and salt than restaurant food. Japanese restaurant food is saltier than its reputation.

Can I buy these ingredients as a visitor?

Yes, and a supermarket is one of the better hours you can spend. Soy sauce, miso, mirin and dashi granules all travel well and are a far better souvenir than anything from a gift shop.

What is the most-cooked meal in Japan?

Curry rice is a strong contender — thick, mild and made from a block of roux — along with grilled fish with rice and miso soup. Neither appears on most tourist itineraries.