This is a classic Japanese home cooking dish: nikujaga. Nikujaga is based on Western beef stew and I have tried to give a novel Kyoto taste to it. This autumn I have been trying to perfect it and I must say that I am proud of this one. Please give it a try and enjoy!

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KyotoFoodie’s Original Kyoto-style Nikujaga with Wagyu Beef Tendon and Kakushi Aji
Nikujaga (肉じゃが) was invented by cooks in the Japanese Navy and is based on beef stew. Niku means meat, as in beef, and jaga (jagaimo) is potato. Nikujaga is now a very popular home cooking dish in Japan. The main ingredients for nikujaga are thin sliced beef, potato, carrot and onion. These typical beef stew ingredients are then simmered in a Japanese style broth of sweet sake and soy sauce.

Beef Tendon: I decided that I wanted to use a non-roast cut of beef for this recipe and decided on fatty tendon. In Japan, beef tendon is popular simmered in sweetened soy sauce and sake. After it is well cooked it is pleasantly ‘mochi-mochi’, or mochi-like in texture. If tendon is undercooked it is just rubbery. After thoroughly cooked it is pleasantly chewy, but more gooey like mochi than rubbery. This cut of meat is called called suji niku in Japanese, literally ‘tendon meat’. This is not just tendon, it is tendon with some meat and fat. Properly prepared, tendon is really good! Give it a try.

Hidden Taste: Next I wanted to add a little non-conventional taste and kakushi aji, or hidden taste. The kakushi aji is cinnamon. Why cinnamon? Cinnamon has been used for centuries to flavor Kyoto’s ubiquitous confection called yatsuhashi that no one in Kyoto actually eats. Today, yatsuhashi is mainly purchased by junior high school students as omiyage when they come to Kyoto on their school excursion. In true kakushi aji fashion, I wanted the cinnamon taste to be there and noticeable but not prominent enough to catch right away as cinnamon.

I was a bit inspired for this recipe by watching Heston Blumenthal’s In Search of Perfection series. This is my perfect Kyoto-style Nikujaga. For the early stages of this dish, I also referred to a recipe in a ‘quick and easy’ type cookbook (村田吉弘の10分でできる和のおかず) that I bought at Kikunoi some years ago written by Chef Yoshihiro Murata. (Mainly the microwaving of potatoes part.)

Here is what it looks like:

Michael's Original: KyotoFoodie-style Nikujaga Wagyu Tendon Beef Stew

You might notice a few things in the photo that are not on the beef stew list of ingredients above. I wanted to add a few non-traditional things; two are ‘Kyoto’ and one isn’t. The ingredients are:

Aburaage: Deep fried tofu used to make the wrapping for Kyoto’s inarizushi.
Yaki Fu: Wheat gluten that has been baked. Various preparations of fu are an important part of Kyoto cuisine.
Kampyo: Kampyo is strips of dried gourd that are most commonly found in sushi rolls.

These three ingredients absorb that flavors of the broth and add contrasting textures.

One last ingredient is ito konnyaku, or threads of konnyaku jelly. Ito konnyaku is often used in nikujaga. While it doesn’t have a lot of taste on its own, it gives an additional contrast of textures.

There is some authentic Kyoto-style philosophical discussion regarding the dashi broth, but lets talk tendon first.

Preparing the Suji Niku Beef Tendon
While it is possible to find just beef tendon in Japan I prefer the part that is a mix of thinner tendon, meat and a bit of fat. It needs more time to cook than the vegetable so I cook it twice before adding the veggies. Sometimes this wagyu suji niku can be quite fatty, the tendon in the photos here is not very fatty though.

I start by boiling the suji niku in salt water for about 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the tendon. I am mainly doing this to remove fat, but not the flavor. After giving it a good boil I pour off the water and rinse the suji niku with hot water in a colander and allow to cool. Once cool enough to handle I cut it into bite sized portions and put it in a wok or frying pan. I cover the meat with sake or cooking sake (ryorishu), cover (and use a wooden otoshibuta if you have one) and cook covered over high heat. I cook it down until all the sake is evaporated and I can hear the oil from the meat sizzling in the pan and then remove from heat.

Wagyu Suji Niku (Beef Tendon)

Wagyu Suji Niku Boiled to Remove Fat

Wagyu Suji Niku Simmered in Sake

Wagyu Suji Niku Simmered in Sake

The Other Ingredients
The other ingredients don’t require much preparation. Cut the kampyo strips into bite sized pieces. Simply drain and rinse the konnyaku and quickly rinse the kampyo and yaki fu in hot water and then place in the dashi broth to reconstitute. The before slicing the aburaage, place in a colander in the sink and slowly pour a pot of boiling water over it to wash any remaining oil from the deep frying process.

Yaki Fu and Kampyo

Aburaage and Konnyaku

Sliced Aburaage

The Dashi Dilemma: Clear Soup or Stew
In Kyoto, dashi soup broth is very serious business. Many traditionalists say that (clear) soup is the climax of the meal and even just pretty good Kyoto restaurants make their dashi from scratch every morning. Some fanatical restaurants make it 3 times a day! It is said to lose its freshness after just a few hours. Dashi is the basis of many classic dishes. At Kichisen I was amazed to learn that they cook their sushi rice in dashi! (They don’t really even serve sushi to guests. But when they make sushi, they use their $5 a cup dashi to cook the rice!)

The typical nikujaga usually has a light broth but I decided to go with a more gravy or stew-like consistency (I live in Kyoto, but I am from “out on the edge of the prairie“), I also wanted to make it with the traditional kastuo dashi — and a little inspiration from Heston Blumenthal! (See this video, 4:02, potato skin infusion.)

Thanks to Heston, I decided to develop a ‘potato dashi’, I call it jaga dashi. While jaga dashi may not be ‘Kyoto’ in taste, I think that it is sufficiently ‘crazy about dashi’ to be authentically ‘Kyoto’.

First I simmer the potato skins in katsuo dashi, this infuses the dashi with the most flavorful part of the potato. Also, I overcooked about 1/3 of the potatoes in the microwave and then dissolve them into the jaga dashi to thicken the consistency and add even more flavor.

 About the katsuo dashi, I never use the chemical powdered stuff. I use the dashi packs that contain all the ingredients that go into proper dashi, these ingredients are just ground and put into a tea bag. Making authentic dashi from scratch is just not something done in home cooking now, leave that to the masters. Dashi packs are a reasonable compromise between ‘chemical’ and ‘from scratch’.

After cooking, most of this jaga dashi will be absorbed into the vegetables and meat, but making it more soupy would surely be yummy too. Just add more sake!

Starting Jaga Dashi

Well Microwaved Potatoes Jaga Dashi

Jaga Dashi Broth with Yaki Fu and Kampyo

Cooking: Simmering the Stew
The peeled potatoes should be pre-cooked in the microwave oven for about 5 minutes. Saute the reconstituted fu and kampyo, konnyaku, aburaage slices and onion with suji niku and remaining oil. Saute covered over high heat for several minutes and until browned slightly.

Next come the sliced potatoes and carrots, chuck them in and then add the jaga dashi and ‘top off’ pan with sake or cooking sake. Most cooking sake has lots of salt added to it so that it can be sold in grocery stores. You want to use seishu (clear sake) if at all possible. Just buy the cheapest sake you can find but make sure it is seishu and not synthetic (goseishu). It has been said that I use an insane amount of sake when I simmer this dish.

After you have drowned all the ingredients in sake turn up the heat. I prefer to use a Chinese style wok instead of the typical Western-style stew pot because I don’t want to stir the nikujaga while it is cooking. Stirring will break the potatoes.

Next you add the cinnamon and tare (soy sauce, mirin, sugar, salt and probably some more sake).

Saute the Beef and Other Ingredients

Drown those ingredients in sake!

Bring to boil

Add the Cinnamon and Tare

Disperse Dashi in Ingredients

Cover with Foil and Simmer

Dekita! ... I think this one is a masterpiece!

My Perfect Nikujaga Served

Kyoto-style Nikujaga Served

Kyoto-style Nikujaga First Bite: Kampyo, Suji Niku and Carrot

Kyoto-style Nikujaga Recipe
This recipe will make at least 10 servings and like any stew, nikujaga tastes even better as leftovers. Just half the ingredients if you want to make less. When I make a large portion like this I use less sugar, salt and soy sauce as it is more healthy. The recipe below you may find bland. I think that you could double the amount of mirin, soy sauce and sugar and add another teaspoon or so of cinnamon to rev up the flavor. If I were doing this recipe for guests or for just one meal, I would definitely use more sugar and soy sauce. Try this as your base and then taste and adjust as you cook.

Ingredients

• 500 g beef
• 1.5 k potato
• 1-2 onions
• 3-4 carrots
• 1 cup sliced aburaage (deep fried tofu)
• 1/2 – 1 cup konnyaku (thin sliced or ito konnyaku)
• 30 g kampyo (dried gourd strips, unbleached if possible)

dashi

• 1 liter water
• 2 katsuo dashi packs
• skins from peeled potatos
• 1/3 of the potatoes, well microwaved and lightly crushed with fork.
• dried kombu kelp (optional)

700 ml – 1 liter of cheap sake (this much ryorishu with salt will ruin the stew)

tare

• 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
• 200 ml sake or cooking sake (ryorishu)
• 100-150 ml Japanese shoyu soy sauce (not thick koikuchi)
• 200 ml mirin (sweet sake)
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup sugar
• salt (pinch)

Preparation
Ingredients: Peel the potatoes and cut into quarters or eighths depending on size, then cover in a bowl and cook in a microwave oven until about half-done. Use about 1/3 of the potatoes for another round of microwaving, cook well. The overcooked potatoes will be used to thicken the jaga dashi.

Peel and slice the carrots and onions.

Drain and rinse the konnyaku. Cut the kampyo into bite sized strips and rinse with hot water with the baked fu and then reconstitute in jaga dashi.

Pour boiling water over aburaage and cut into strips after cooling.

If necessary boil the beef once to remove excess fat. (See above for details if you are using tendon. If you are using roast or similar cut, this step is probably not necessary.) If using tendon or other tough cut of beef, simmer in sake.

Dashi: Simmer about 1 liter of water with several katsudashi packs and the peeled skins from the potatoes. After 20 minutes remove dashi packs and potato skins. Gently mash the over-microwaved potato slices and add to dashi and simmer covered for about 20 minutes.

Saute the beef with other ingredients except potato and carrot until lightly browned then add the jaga dashi. Next add the potatoes and carrots and fill pan with sake until all ingredients are covered and bring to a gentle boil.

Tare: Over a low flame, heat the tare ingredients gently until sugar is dissolved.

Simmer the over medium heat and add tare and cinnamon. Use a ladle to mix the tare with the dashi well. Avoid stirring to not break the potatoes. Cover with foil, leaving a small hole for steam to escape. Simmer and reduce dashi to a thick gravy-like consistency.

Flavor Balance and Kakushi Aji
Either a thick gravy or a light broth for this recipe would be nice, I think. The amount of salt and soy sauce is very important, so do like real chefs do and taste as you go. You can always add more but you can’t take it away.

The most important point in the recipe for me is the cinnamon. I want it to be a hidden taste. I want the person eating it to say, Uh, what is this? I know this taste but I can’t quite place it. If they say something like; Wow, cinnamon flavored stew, that’s interesting. Then, I think have used too much cinnamon.

Help Spread Kyoto Culinary Culture and Get a Present from Kyoto Foodie! If you make and adapt this recipe and publish it on your blog, I will send you box Kyoto foodie goodies. (If a lot of people do it, I think I will have to choose just a few winners and not send everyone a prize.) Send a trackback and/or comment with a link to your nikujaga! Be daring!

Reference and Links
Nikujaga
Dashi
Aburaage
Fu (wheat gluten)
Kampyo
Yatsuhashi

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I love nikuman, both the Japanese and Chinese variety. I find the baozi in China has a wonderful variety of hearty and tasty, usually handmade fillings and the nikuman in Japan often have great steamed bread but are a little mass produced in taste and feel. Japanese nikuman lacks the hearty soul of baozi in China as it is almost never handmade or fresh.

Kyoto-style baozi is not something that I had contemplated. It turns out there is a Kyoto kaiseki restaurant in Gion called Hattori Ebisu Rakuan (服部ゑびす楽庵) that developed a Kyoto-style manju that is sold in a few places in Kyoto, one being the foodie’s paradise of Nishiki Market. Hattori Ebisu Rakuan doesn’t actually have a shop in Nishiki but the tsukudani store Ajidontsuki has a steamer full of their nikuman. Give this one a try if you are visiting Nishiki Market, especially in during the winter months. In one recent year this was the number one selling item in all of Nishiki Market!

Kyoto-style Beef Manju Steamed Bun

In addition to being tasty, these nikuman are beautiful. They have a delightful ‘yakiin’ hot iron brand that says kokyo hoka, kokyo means old capital and hoka means hot, and these manju are hot hot hot!

Inside the thick streamed but is a mixture of beef tsukudani (wagyu beef simmered in sweet soy sauce), kimpira gobo (burdock root simmered in sweet soy sauce) and shibazuke tsukemono (Kyoto-style eggplant and cucumber pickled with red shiso)! The addition of tsukemono is really novel.

Kyoto-style Beef Manju Steamed Bun

Kyoto-style Beef Manju Steamed Bun - detail

How did it taste?
This nikuman is served straight out of the steamer and it is REALLY hot. I couldn’t eat mine right away and had to sit down on a chair in the shop while it cooled down.

I took a first nibble but it was still too hot for me to bite through the steamed bread and get to the tsukudani filling. The steamed bread is quite thick and being bread doesn’t have a huge taste. At first I was a little disappointed  feeling like it was going to be bland. Then after another nibble or two I finally got to the tsukudani filling, it was amazing! The combination of wagyu beef, burdock root — and tsukemono was a real surprise and quite overwhelmed me with flavor.

The texture was weird and satisfying; gooey rich beef, fibrous burdock root and crunchy, but hot tsukemono pickles. Tsukemono is always served as is, not cooked.

This little snack is a wonderously weird combination of several orthodox Japanese dishes and condiments — and pickles — wrapped up in a bit of classic Chinese cuisine. And, somehow it manages to still feel pretty ‘Kyoto’ to me. The shibazuke is one of Kyoto’s most well known tsukemono pickles and comes from Ohara, a small village in the mountains just north of the city. Ohara is very famous for its red shiso which is used to naturally color and flavor various pickles.

One thing, Miwa said that she has had this many times and sometime it is not so good. It is basically fast food. Though this nikuman was developed by a famous restaurant in Gion, I doubt that it is actually made by Hattori Ebisu Rakuan, on site. Production is probably subcontracted out. But it is still very good, pretty authentically Kyoto — and unique!

Ajidontsuki Shop Storefront, Nikuman Steamer on Left

Ajidontsuki Product Lineup, Mostly Tsukudani

– Map Coming Soon –

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Tsukudani is a Japanese condiment that is usually made of seaweed that has been simmered in soy sauce, cooking sake and mirin. Kitayama, or the North Mountains of Kyoto are famous for Tsukudani made with mountain vegetables and mushrooms. Some tsukudani shinise stores in the city make tsukudani with wagyu beef.

Tsukudani is easy to make and goes well with rice and also with sake. Try it with wine too.

Tsukudani (佃煮)
Earlier in the spring of this year I got this incredibly delicious tsukudani from Tanigawa-san at Kichisen. He made it with whole togarashi pepper plant; the stems, leaves, tiny fruit and all. It was quite salty due to the amount of soy sauce used, fairly dry and the taste of pepper was obvious. I had wanted to make it myself but had only found that pepper plant in the store once.

I had wanted to make this tsukudani for myself and found Kyotona (京唐菜) the other day at the market. ‘Kyo’ means Kyoto, ‘to’ means pepper and ‘na’ means vegetable. I checked later and this wasn’t the exact same vegetable that Tanigawa-san used for his, it is more leafy but the peppery taste is definitely there.

I bought three bunches of kyotona and some wagyu beef to make mine. I wanted it to be something that I could use to flavor onigiri, so not insanely salty.

I checked around on the internet for recipes and they all used far too much soy sauce for my taste. I ended up using 1/5 the amount that one recipe called for. (See my recipe below.)

The Main Ingredients: Kyotona and Wagyu Beef

Wagyu Beef

Washing and Separating the Kyotona

Kyotona in the Pan

Cooking Down the Kyotona

Simmering with Soy Sauce and Sake

Finished

Sliced Dried Chili Pepper

Kyotona and Wagyu Tsukudani

Here is my recipe:

• 700 grams of kyotona (weighed before washing)
• 100 – 200 grams fatty wagyu beef
• 1 cup of ryorishu (cooking sake)
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup of high quality Japanese soy sauce
• 1/2 cup of mirin (sweet cooking sake)

optional ingredients

• a few tablespoons of sugar
• 1 – 2 tablespoon of sesame oil
• finely chopped ginger
• dried red chili pepper (not too hot)

For my tastes, start I started with 1/2 cup of soy sauce per 500 grams of main ingredients (beef and greens). Add and adjust other flavors from there to your liking.

1. Slice beef into strips, not cubes as I did. Long and slender will keep them from separating from the greens. Saute for several minutes. Add sesame oil if necessary.

2. Wash the greens and remove stems. By hand squeeze out as much water content as possible. (At first I thought that I had committed a Kyoto-style sacrilege by not using the stems. But I simmered a few and tried them, they were quite woody and inedible. I imagine that with other varieties of greens the stems could be used though. Stems would probably need to simmer longer than the more delicate leafy greens.)

3. Cook down the greens to remove water content. I added 1/2 cup of cooking sake to a covered wok and steamed down the greens over high heat. Then I removed the cover, reduced heat and allowed most of the water to evaporate out.

4. Add remaining cooking sake, half the soy sauce and mirin. Taste and adjust flavor (add soy sauce, sugar, mirin, ginger, etc) accordingly to your taste. Simmer down until most liquid is evaporated and flavors are fully absorbed in the greens and meat.

5. Allow to cool, uncovered. I added finely chopped dried chili peppers. The fancy, Kichisen way to do it is to just add the seeds. I added the chili after the tsukudani had cooled down because I didn’t want the spicy hotness to be absorbed too much into the tsukudani, I assume that heat and liquid content facilitates this. I used 3 chili peppers and that might have been a little too much. I don’t want the tsukudani itself to be spicy, I just want it to contain some bits of spiciness in it.

How did it taste?
My tsukudani turned out not too salty, a bit sweet with the pronounced green peppery taste of the greens. I wish that this variety of greens had been more peppery though. The hotness of the chopped chili was about the right contrast to the oiliness of the beef.

Tsukudani Regional and Seasonal Varieties
In Japan tsukudani is made with many regional and seasonal ingredients. In mountainous areas, mountain vegetables and wild mushrooms are common and near the sea, fish, especially shellfish, are commonly used. Kombu kelp and other sea vegetables are probably the most common base ingredient, even in areas removed from the sea.

In Kyoto many people make tsukudani as a side dish with daikon radish greens.

Try making your own tsukudani inspired dish!
Usually the more expensive the tsukudani, the more salty it is, as it is only intended to be a tiny bite to accent kaiseki cuisine. Again, my recipe was intended to produce something that could be used to stuff or flavor onigiri or as a ‘topping’ for rice.

Try making tsukudani with whatever you can obtain in your region. You just need Japanese soy sauce, sake or cooking sake and sugar to get the base taste of this dish.

Tsukudani can be something to go with rice, or it can be more like an appetizer that would go wonderfully with wine or dark beer. I can imagine wild mushrooms in Europe or oysters in North America making some killer appetizer type tsukudani.

Wagyu Roast Beef Donburi is a recent invention of Paku and it kicks!

This novel donburi features fine wagyu (Japanese beef) roast beef, on a bed mugi genmai gohan (barley brown rice) and fresh mizuna and topped off with a shoyu based onion sauce.

Main Ingredients: roast beef (preferably wagyu style), mizuna (or other similar green), rice (1 cup ‘genmai‘ brown rice, 1 cup white rice, 1/2 – 2/3 cup ‘mugi‘ barley), *dried kombu
(*optional)

Sauce Ingredients: onion (grated), shoyu, cooking sake (or white cooking wine), mirin and sugar (about 1 tablespoon each)

Rice: If possible, use Japanese style short-grain rice. If using genmai, be sure to soften it up adequately before cooking. This can be done by soaking the genmai in water over night or by pouring on boiling water and letting it stand about 2 hours before cooking. If you don’t like or don’t have genmai, just white rice or mugi gohan is fine too. Genmai and mugi makes for a more healthy donburi. Cook the rice with a sheet of dried kombu if you can obtain it as is adds excellent flavor and minerals.

Sauce Preparation: Grate half an onion as shown in the photo below. Combine all sauce ingredients in a pan and cook over moderate heat for several minutes and until it starts to thicken up. Paku says to just cook it until the ‘sting’ of the onion is ‘gone’.

Serve: Serve the rice in a large ‘donburi‘ style bowl and place fresh mizuna on top of the rice. Atop the mizuna, place the roast beef and spoon on the onion shoyu sauce.

Enjoy!

The Main Ingredients

Wagyu roastbeef, mizuna (greens), genmai mugi gohan and dried kombu (kelp)

Sauce Ingredients

Onion, shoyu, sake, mirin and sugar

Grating the Onion

If you don’t have this kind of Japanese grating implement, a food processor will work just fine too.

Cooking the Sauce

Cook for several minutes, until thick and mellow in flavor.

Dekita! Wagyu Roast Beef with Shoyu Onion Sauce Donburi

Enjoy!

This is a quick and easy dish that makes Western-style roast beef modern-Japanese.

The land of fish happens to produce the finest beef in the world as well. Japanese have a knack for perfecting things, whether it be fax machines, cameras, or the production of beef.

You have probably heard of Japan’s excuisite beef, Wagyu (和牛) literally ‘Japanese beef’. Kobe-gyu (神戸牛) is surely the most famous Wagyu in Japan.

This is a quick and tasty dish, a variation on donburi (rice bowl).

Just fry or grill a bit of fine steak, cube it and serve it on a bed of barley rice (麦ご飯, mugi gohan), garnish it with chopped scallions and finished with a splash of grated ginger shoyu.

When I cook rice I usually as some barley and put two big pieces of dried kombu (昆布, kelp) on top. As the rice is cooking, it is permeated with the rich and subtle taste of kombu.

The yakumi (薬味), ginger, scallions and fine shoyu

The Wagyu, just a small steak will do

Wagyu Steak Donburi, served on a bed of barley-rice (麦ご飯, mugi gohan)

home cooking note: Paku and I (Peko) decided to start putting some piks of our home cooking on KyotoFoodie. As our readers are foodies, surely you all can look at the piks and simple explanations and create your own delicious dishes and variations without needing a detailed recipe and instructions.