Nikujaga Recipe

Hi Everyone,

So the other I came home from work and decided I'd make one of my favorite Japanese recipes, Nikujaga. Those of you who watch anime or J-dramas might have seen this, it's a popular recipe in Japan for home cooking. Nikujaga is part of Yoshoku cuisine in Japan.

What is Yoshoku? Yoshoku is what you call "Japanified" foods from western countries. Nikujaga is the Japanese rendition of beef stew, the name literally is Meat and Potatoes. I'm personally a major fan of yoshoku dishes, especially when suggesting Japanese recipes to people who have never made Japanese food before. I kind of like to think of it as a friendly way to introduce people to flavors before getting them to delve into things like Nabe. Plus the ingredients are normally pretty easy to find except maybe for the dashi.

I hope you give my rendition of the nikujaga a try I made 2 small changes to the recipe from all the other ones I see online and I think it just adds to the flavor. This recipe will serve about 4 people.

1 pound shaved beef (can't find shaved? that's ok I'll tell you what you can do in the instructions)
3 large potatoes cut into wedges (bite sized wedges)
3 carrots cut into rolling wedges
1 cup of sugar snap peas or green beans (both are very good in this)
2 medium sized onions

2 cups of water (warm water)
1 TSP of dashi (dashi made of sea weed)
1 TSP garlic paste
4 TBS Sake
4 TBS Shoyu (Soy Sauce)
4 TBS sugar
2 TBS vegetable oil
1 TSP salt (optional)
dash of pepper (optional)

I'm going to be very honest, when I was prepping to make this I was all excited then it hit me....I had no green beans or sugar snap peas, I just love how they taste in this dish so I was unhappy I didn't have them. But it certainly didn't stop me from making nikujaga. So if you don't have them it's ok to omit them although I highly recommend you try to get them.

In a pot add the 2 TBS vegetable oil and saute the onion, garlic paste and shaved beef until the beef begins to brown.

Add your carrots and potatoes.

Stir in the 1 TSP of dashi into your warm water, when the water is warm it helps dissolve the dashi better. You don't necessarily have to use warm water but it helps. Add it to the pot.

Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Then add the sugar, sake, shoyu, salt and pepper. Gently stir, try your best not to break the potatoes.

Then let it simmer until the liquid reduces to 1/2, you can even reduce it to 1/4 the flavors will be more concentrated then.

When you see the liquid is closer to being reduced to half it's original amount add the sugar snap peas or green beans, they can be fresh or frozen and gently mix them in. They'll cook rather fast, usually takes 5-10 minutes.

After that it's ready to serve. You can eat this with rice but I tend not to.

Now if you can't get shaved beef which frankly I can't get my hands on when I go to giant eagle you can make it at home. If you get a large piece of beef like a roast. You can put it in the freezer for about 1 or sometimes closer to 2 hours depending on the size of the roast. You then take it out and make very thin cuts with your knife and it'll shave that way.

You can also make nikujaga with thicker pieces of meat like the size you'd have if you were making a stir fry, I've done this before and I've just added a bit more dashi and let it cook longer so the meat became really tender.

Hope you give my recipe a try and if you have any requests just let me know ^.^