Ingredients

Traditional ingredients

Further information: History of Japanese cuisine and List of Japanese ingredients

A characteristic of traditional Japanese food is the sparing use of red meat, oils and fats, and dairy products.Use of ingredients such as soy sauce, miso, and umeboshi tends to result in dishes with high salt content, though there are low-sodium versions of these available.

Meat consumption

Yakiniku

As Japan is an island nation surrounded by an ocean, its people have always taken advantage of the abundant seafood supply. It is the opinion of some food scholars that the Japanese diet always relied mainly on "grains with vegetables or seaweeds as main, with poultry secondary, and red meat in slight amounts" even before the advent of Buddhism which placed an even stronger taboo. The eating of "four-legged creatures" (四足 yotsuashi) was spoken of as taboo, unclean or something to be avoided by personal choice through the Edo Period. Notably, the consumption of whale and terrapin meat were not forbidden under this definition. Despite this, the consumption of red meat did not completely disappear in Japan. Eating wild game—as opposed to domesticated livestock—was tolerated; in particular, trapped hare was counted using the measure word wa (羽), a term normally reserved for birds.

Vegetable consumption has dwindled while processed foods have become more prominent in Japanese households due to the rising costs of general foodstuffs.Nonetheless, Kyoto vegetables, or Kyoyasai, are rising in popularity and different varieties of Kyoto vegetables are being revived.

Cooking oil

Generally speaking, traditional Japanese cuisine is prepared with little cooking oil. A major exception is the deep-frying of foods. This cooking method was introduced during the Edo Period due to influence from Western (formerly called nanban-ryōri (南蛮料理) and Chinese cuisine, and became commonplace with the availability of cooking oil due to increased productivity. Dishes such as tempura, aburaage, and satsumaage are now part of established traditional Japanese cuisine. Words such as tempura or hiryōzu (synonymous with ganmodoki) are said to be of Portuguese origin.

Also, certain homey or rustic sorts of traditional Japanese foods such as kinpira, hijiki, and kiriboshi daikon usually involve stir-frying in oil before stewing in soy sauce. Some standard osōzai or ''obanzai''dishes feature stir-fried Japanese greens with either age or chirimen-jako, dried sardines.

Seasonings

The use of soy sauce is prevalent in Japanese cuisine

See also Japanese seasonings

Traditional Japanese food is typically seasoned with a combination of dashi, soy sauce, sake and mirin, vinegar, sugar, and salt. These are typically the only seasonings used when grilling or braising an item. A modest number of herbs and spices may be used during cooking as a hint or accent, or as a means of neutralizing fishy or gamy odors present. Examples of such spices include ginger and takanotsume (鷹の爪)red pepper.This contrasts conceptually with barbecue or stew, where a blend of seasonings is used before and during cooking.

Once a main dish has been cooked, spices such as minced ginger and various pungent herbs may be added as a garnish, called tsuma.With certain milder items, a dollop of wasabi and grated daikon (daikon-oroshi), or Japanese mustard are provided as condiments. A sprig of mitsuba or a piece of yuzu rind floated on soups are called ukimi.Minced shiso leaves and myoga often serve as yakumi, a type of condiment paired with tataki of katsuo or soba.Finally, a dish may be garnished with minced seaweed in the form of crumpled nori or flakes of aonori. Shichimi is also a very popular spice mixture often added to soups, noodles and rice cakes, Shichimi is a chilli based spice mix which containing 7 spices: chilli, sansho, orange peel, black sesame, white sesame, hemp, ginger, and nori 

Dishes

Yakizakana (grilled rockfish) with mushroom, leeks, and yuzu

Further information: okazu (or sōzai ; List of okazu

In the aforementioned stock phrase ichijū-sansai (一汁三菜 "one soup, three sides"), the word sai has the basic meaning of "vegetable", but secondarily means any accompanying dish including fish or meat. It figures in the Japanese word for appetizer, zensai (前菜); main dish, shusai (主菜); or sōzai (formal synonym for okazu - considered somewhat of a housewife's term).

Salads

Japanese vegetable salads often add seafood

The o-hitashi or hitashi-mono  is boiled green-leaf vegetables bunched and cut to size, steeped in dashi broth, eaten with dashes of soy sauce. Another item is sunomono (酢の物 lit "vinegar item"), which could be made with wakame seaweed,or be something like a kōhaku namasu (紅白なます "red white namasu") made from thin toothpick slices of daikon and carrot. The so-called vinegar that is blended with the ingredient here is often sanbaizu (三杯酢 "three cupful/spoonful vinegar")which is a blend of vinegar, mirin, and soy sauce. A tosazu (土佐酢 "Tosa vinegar") adds katsuo dashi to this. Note sparing use of oil, compared with Western salads.

An aemono (和え物) is another group of items, describable as a sort of "tossed salad" or "dressed" (though aemono also includes thin strips of squid or fish sashimi (itozukuri) etc. similarly prepared). One types are goma-ae (胡麻和え) where usually vegetables such as green beans are tossed with white or black sesame seeds ground in a suribachi mortar bowl, flavored additionally with sugar and soy sauce. Shira-ae (白和え) adds tofu (bean curd) in the mix.An aemono is tossed with vinegar-white miso mix and uses wakegi scallion and baka-gai (バカガイ or 馬鹿貝 a trough shell (Mactra sinensis) as standard.