Healthy Japanese Recipes

Skip the takeout and try this easy sushi recipe at home. A twist on the classic California roll, these are as much fun to make as they are to eat. Rolling with the rice on the outside takes a little extra dexterity but the eye-catching sushi-bar results make it worth it.

This tofu recipe is inspired by chawanmushi, a Japanese custard that is very soft and delicate, made with lots of liquid, which flows out of the custard as you eat it. Incorporating soft tofu with the eggs makes the custard firmer and more substantial. Besides shrimp, this custard could be made with scallops, cooked lobster, crab or cooked fish. Serve as a first course or for lunch with a side of vegetables and rice.

Green tea soba noodles, or cha soba, are buckwheat noodles made with powdered green tea, which imparts a subtle grassy note and pretty color. You can find them in Japanese markets or online. Regular buckwheat soba noodles work just as well in this cup-of-noodles-style mason jar noodle soup.

This healthy bento box idea makes it easy, healthy and affordable to have sushi for lunch as often as you'd like! Skip the rolling and place sushi ingredients like rice, shrimp and avocado in a bento for a packable lunch for work.

This crispy Japanese chicken recipe comes complete with a creamy warm slaw on the side. Serve with steamed brown rice or buckwheat soba noodles to round out the meal. We like to use chicken cutlets made with dark-meat chicken thighs--they have more than twice the immune-boosting zinc of white-meat chicken breasts.

This Japanese-inspired cool, crisp salad is as elegant and well balanced as it is simple.

Ramen noodles are tossed with a chipotle-soy sauce in this healthy sesame noodle recipe. Be sure to rinse the noodles until they're cold, then give them a good shake in the colander until they're well drained. Are you a spiralizing pro? Swap 5 cups of raw zucchini, carrot or other veggie “noodles” for the cooked pasta.

Set out all the ingredients for these healthy hand rolls so diners can have fun making their own. Look for bean thread noodles--sometimes labeled vermicelli, mung bean or cellophane noodles--along with sheets of nori (seaweed) in the Asian section of most supermarkets.

This spinach salad tossed with spunky ginger dressing was inspired by the iceberg salads served at Japanese steakhouses across the U.S. Add shrimp for lunch or a light supper.

A touch of honey balances the bitterness of matcha in this healthy latte recipe. For a nondairy latte, swap unsweetened almond, soy or coconut milk for the low-fat milk.

The round, rich taste (also known as umami) of miso soup perfectly complements plump, briny clams. For the base of the soup you can use just water and miso, which you can find at most supermarkets. But if you can find dashi granules, they're worth adding for a more intense umami taste.

Powdered green tea blended with sweet whipped cream is a popular parfait topping in Japan, particularly in Kyoto. Here the cream is lightened with low-fat yogurt cheese to make a pretty and delicious topping for poached pears and other desserts.

Green tea, delicately flavored with ginger and almond, makes a delightful poaching medium for pears.

Japanese short-grain rice is sweet, pearly and sticky enough to pick up with your chopsticks. (Look for the excellent Nishiki brand of rice, available in most Japanese markets.) Do not skip the rinsing and soaking process: the initial rinsing rids the rice of the powdered bran and polishing compound, while the soaking plumps the grains with water to render them tender and slightly tacky.

Dried kelp and bonito flakes, briefly simmered, create a delicate amber broth called “first” or “primary” dashi, the basis for most clear soups in Japan. For “second” dashi, the kelp and bonito are added to a new pot of water (like a used tea bag), making a weaker stock to be used in boldly seasoned dishes like miso soup. Although instant dashi granules and bottles of concentrated dashi are timesaving substitutes, the taste is less subtle and refined than dashi made from scratch.

Miso sauces have recently moved out of Japan and into the global culinary landscape--and why not? Here, the fermented bean paste, familiar as a soup base, becomes a sweet, delicious glaze, turning a simple roast salmon into an international sensation.

This sweet, salty and tangy twist on the old standby vegetable combo is sure to please the whole family.

There's sour, sweet, salty and bitter... and then there's “umami.” That's the Japanese term for the “fifth” taste sensation, a delicious meaty or savory taste. This taste comes from glutamates, and can be found in anchovies, soy sauce, fish sauce and tomatoes. This dish, made with miso (fermented soybean paste) is, to use our term, “umami-licious.”

Tofu, rice and plenty of vegetables transform miso soup from a light accompaniment into a dish that's substantial enough to leave you feeling satisfied.

This Japanese-inspired dish uses one sauce--a sweet/salt combination of mirin and miso--to make both the marinade for the scallops and the caramelized pan sauce for the noodles. A good pairing would be a simple green salad dressed with a citrus vinaigrette.