Pantry
Sake
酒
Also called nihonshu, Japanese rice wine, ryorishu, cooking sake
Japanese rice wine, brewed from polished rice, water, koji mould and yeast, usually 14 to 16 percent alcohol. In the kitchen it goes into marinades, simmering liquids and tare, where it softens fishy smells, tenderises meat and adds a round, savoury sweetness.
Origin
Japan, where it has been brewed for well over a thousand years. Cooking sake, ryorishu, is sold next to the soy sauce and usually has salt added; drinking sake is sold where the wine is.
Flavour
Clean, faintly sweet and grainy, with a light fruit note in better bottles. Most of the alcohol cooks off and leaves depth rather than a taste of drink.
How it is made
Steamed rice is inoculated with koji, which turns starch into sugar while yeast turns that sugar into alcohol in the same tank. The mash is pressed, filtered and usually pasteurised.
How to use it
A cheap, dry drinking sake gives a cleaner result than salted cooking sake. Simmer it with soy sauce and mirin for teriyaki, sukiyaki and ramen tare, splash it over fish before steaming, or add a little to dashi broths and oden.
Storage
Keep an opened bottle in the fridge and use it for cooking within a month or two. Unopened, keep it somewhere cool and dark.
Recipes using it
Tonkotsu ramen
豚骨ラーメン
Pork bones boiled hard until the broth turns white and thick, with a soy tare, rolled chashu and a marinated egg. A long weekend project, or a pressure-cooker afternoon.
A bit of work
Sukiyaki
すき焼き
Kanto-style sukiyaki: thin marbled beef, tofu and vegetables simmered at the table in sweet soy warishita, each bite dipped in beaten raw egg.
Easy
Oden
おでん
A winter pot of daikon, eggs, kombu knots and fish cakes left to soak in a light soy dashi until they taste of it. Eaten with hot mustard, better the next day.
Easy
Unadon
鰻丼
Glazed grilled eel over hot rice with sweet soy tare. The honest home method: store-bought kabayaki eel, steamed with sake and re-glazed under a hot grill.
Easy