Instant Food Products
We will explain about preserved food such as traditional dried food in a different section.
Here we’d like to introduce instant food products like ramen noodles and half-cooked products. The consumption of these products increased rapidly after the war.
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Traditionally, Japan has had plenty of preserved food, for instance, salted seafood, fermented products, and dried farm products.
These days, you can see instant food products occupying about half of the shelf space at a supermarket in Japan.
There are a variety of types available; dehydrated instant foods, microwave foods and half-cooked foods you can add extra ingredients to, such as fresh vegetables or meat. Because of the great range, you can actually make a different dish for everyday of the year.
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Dehydrated instant foods
Speaking of instant food products, Japanese people think of instant noodles in cups first. Most cup noodle products take only 3 minutes to cook and now there are soba, udon and spaghetti cup noodles available. At most supermarkets, the shelf space for cup noodles is as big as the space for meat or fish. Many families buy them as preserved food for emergencies.
Most instant noodle products used to be cooked in pots, but now they are mostly cooked in cups.
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This is how you cook udon cup noodles.
In an adult palm-sized cup like this, you can find noodles, some other dried ingredients and a packet of soup powder. Put the dried ingredients and the soup powder in the cup, pour in boiling water up to the line, put the lid on and wait for 3 minutes.
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Ready to eat!
*We used imitation udon noodles.
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How to make curry
In Japan, the popular way of eating curry is to put curry on top of rice. Some people say curry is a national food. However, there aren’t many people who start with blending spices to make curry like the Indians. In Japan, almost everyone is dependant on instant curry products. There are two ways of making instant curry, which differs from instant noodles.
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1) Making curry using a curry stock block
Curry stock blocks are available to make curry. All you have to do is to stir-fry meat and onions, add some water to the pan and cook with a curry stock block.
You can make your original curry using your favourite ingredients cheaply this way.
A packet of curry stock is approximately 250 yen, which serves 6 people. If you use cheap ingredients, you can perhaps make curry within the budget of 100 yen per person.
2) Using a ready-to-eat curry pack
Buy a ready-to-eat curry pack from the shop, put it in boiling water and heat it up for a few minutes. That’s all you have to do.
There are a variety of ready-to-eat curry packs available these days and they even taste better than using a curry stock block.
Relatively cheap ones are about 200 yen per pack (one portion).
They are a little expensive as they don’t require any cooking other than boiling.
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Half-cooked products (semi-instant products)
Since the invention of high-pressure and high-temperature sterilizing technology for packing, there has been a significant improvement in the taste of half-cooked food products.
Especially curry, for example, there are so many good, cheap kinds available, there has been a significant decrease in the number of people who make curry at home.
Except for curry, there is still a lot of room for improvement in pre-cooked products. The ones with an accent of spices taste nice, but they haven’t got to the stage where they can re-create sophisticated Japanese dishes that don’t usually have strong tastes.
Recently, half-cooked products using this high-pressure and high-temperature technology have been popular. In a small pack inside the product, you can find pre-made sauce. You can use the sauce when cooking vegetables or meat in the frying pan or in a pot. You can enjoy fresh ingredients as well as taking plenty of nutrition.
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*“Cook Do products” recommended by the editorial staff
Just follow the cooking instructions on the box. For example, the box says, “Just cook with beef and green peppers”. All you need to do is to buy the ingredients you need and spend 15 minutes in the kitchen.
Stir-fry or boil the ingredients and then cook with the sauce (see the photo).
That’s all you have to do.
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Frozen food
Frozen food is popular among young housewives.
As they have to prepare lunch boxes for their pre-school children in Japan, it is handy to use frozen food products.
The technology used for frozen food has improved and it tastes pretty good too. Some of them only require thawing and heating up in the microwave, which is favoured by busy housewives.
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