Five Flavors, Five Colors and Five Methods of Dishes: Japanese Cuisine

Since ancient times, Japanese cuisine has been called "five flavors, five colors, and five laws."

"Five flavors" refer to sweet, sour, spicy, bitter, and salty;

"Five colors" refer to white, yellow, red, blue and black;

"Five methods" refer to cooking methods of raw, boiled, roasted, fried, and steamed.

The formation of the unique flavor of Japanese cuisine is inseparable from its unique geographical environment and oriental traditional culture. Its basic characteristics are: strong seasonality; delicious taste, keeping the original taste light and not greasy, and many dishes are eaten raw; the raw materials are mainly seafood and vegetables; the processing is fine and the colors are bright.

The primary characteristic of Japanese cuisine is its strong seasonality, and different dishes are required in different seasons. It can be compared in this way. Four seasons are like longitude, and festivals are like latitude. They are intertwined to form the dishes of each period and the dishes of each season.

Raw materials: The freshness of the raw materials of the dishes should be guaranteed, and the vegetables and fish should be available in any season.

Among them, the vegetables are mainly taro, small eggplant, radish, and beans.

The seasonality of fish is also strong. People can eat different kinds of fresh fish in different seasons, such as snapper in spring, matsutake in early summer, eel in midsummer, mackerel in early autumn, saury in autumn, salmon in late autumn, and shad and dolphins in winter. .

The main meat is beef, followed by chicken and pork, but pork is rarely used. In addition, there are many varieties of mushrooms.

Cooking: The cooking of Japanese dishes mainly maintains the freshness of the dishes and the taste of the dishes themselves, many of which are mainly eaten raw.

In practice, cooking, roasting, and steaming are the main methods, and oily vegetables are rare.

In the method of flavoring, sugar and mirin wine are added first, followed by soy sauce and salt, because sugar and wine not only adjust the taste, but also maintain various nutrients in the vegetable dishes. Also put as little MSG as possible.

There are three types of soy sauce used in Japanese dishes, namely light, thick and heavy. Light mouth is lighter in color, thick mouth is normal soy sauce, heavy mouth is darker in color and sweeter in taste.

 Ingredients: Muyu flower soup is mainly used in cooking, and water is rarely used.

Therefore, Japanese cooking of wooden fish flower soup is very important, just as important as chicken soup for Chinese food and beef soup for western food. Therefore, the high-end dishes are mainly made of wooden fish flower soup and sake, and the consumption of sake is also very large.

There are many kinds of miso used in Japanese dishes. Generally, Shinshu miso or white miso is used as miso soup for breakfast, and red miso is used for miso soup in the afternoon and evening.

There are many seasonings and ingredients in Japanese cuisine, but these are the main ingredients.

In terms of the taste of the dishes, the small wine dishes are mainly sweet, salty and sour, the soup dishes are mainly light, and the dishes are small and refined.

The decorations of the side dishes change with the seasons, such as pepper leaves, sesame leaves, bamboo leaves, persimmon leaves, chrysanthemum leaves and so on. In Japan, the dishes are decorated with flowers and leaves that are different in the four seasons, which can better express the content of kaiseki cuisine.

Japanese cuisine has always been praised as "dishes tasted with the eyes". Not only is the plate exquisitely presented, but its pursuit of taste is also unremittingly improved. Nowadays, Japanese cuisine has firmly established itself in the Chinese catering market, and it is quite popular among young consumers. Its development prospects are promising, and its profitability is also very impressive.