Cookbook:Carrots Cooked Kinpira Style

Cookbook | Ingredients | Recipes | Cuisine of Japan

Kinpira is a Japanese cooking term that roughly translates to sauté and simmer. The aim is to cook root vegetables such as carrots and burdock root in a minimum amount of water so that they end up tenderly cooked and with none of their flavour or nutritional value lost into discarded cooking water.

Ingredients

• 250g (½ lb) carrots, julienned
• 1 Tbs vegetable oil, preferably sesame oil
• water
• Tamari or shoyu soy sauce, to taste

Procedure

1. Cut the carrots into thin matchstick pieces (sen-giri, or julienned)
2. Pour a small amount of oil into a saucepan and sauté the carrot pieces briefly
3. Add only enough water to half-cover the carrot pieces
4. Place the lid on the pot and let the carrots simmer briefly on medium-low heat
5. Add a little tamari or shoyu to enhance flavour