Reading Japanese Recipes and Cooking Terms

How a Japanese recipe is laid out

Almost every Japanese recipe has the same three blocks. First zairyō, the ingredients, with a serving note in brackets such as futari-bun for two people. Then tsukurikata or tejun, the method, written as numbered steps that each end in a plain instruction. Last comes a short finishing note about serving or storing. Anything before the ingredients is usually a comment from the writer and can be skipped while you are learning.

The steps are written in one of two styles. Recipe books and packets often use the dictionary form with a noun ending, as in tamanegi o usugiri ni suru, which reads like an instruction on a page. Spoken recipes and cooking programmes switch to polite -masu forms, as in usugiri ni shimasu, and add -te kudasai when addressing the viewer directly. Learn to read the first style and to say the second, because that is the one you will use when explaining a dish to somebody.

Measurement words and how to say them

Japanese recipes measure by spoon, cup and gram rather than by feel, and the two spoons are abbreviated so heavily that they look like a different alphabet at first. Ōsaji is the tablespoon and kosaji the teaspoon; both are followed by a plain number, so ōsaji ni is two tablespoons. Half is written with the character for half, as in ōsaji hanbun. The cup, kappu, is a standard measuring cup and is not the mug on your shelf.

Two vague quantities appear constantly and confuse learners because they look precise. Tekiryō means as much as suits the dish, and shōshō means a very small amount, roughly a pinch, usually of salt or pepper. Neither is a mistake in the recipe: the writer is telling you to judge it. When you say these aloud, keep the number and the unit together as one chunk, ōsaji-ni, the way you would say two-tablespoons in English.

Read the list itself aloud rather than scanning it, because the item comes first and the amount second, the opposite of the English habit of saying two onions: a Japanese list says tamanegi ikko, onion one-item. The gap between the item and the amount is a full-width space in the original, and on a printed card it may be a dotted line. Neither is punctuation you need to read. If a quantity is written as a fraction you will usually see it spoken as hanbun for half or yonbun no ichi for a quarter.

Cutting verbs and the shapes they make

This is the part of Japanese cooking vocabulary that has no tidy English equivalent, because the words name the finished shape rather than the knife action. Sengiri is not the act of julienning; it is the thin matchsticks you end up with. That is why the grammar looks odd at first: you say ninjin o sengiri ni shimasu, literally make the carrot into sengiri, using ni suru rather than a verb of cutting.

The pattern is worth drilling on its own, because it covers every shape word in the table below. Noun plus o, then shape plus ni shimasu. Learners who try to force kiru into the sentence produce sengiri o kirimasu, which sounds like cutting the matchsticks themselves. The plain verbs such as muku for peeling and suriorosu for grating behave normally and take a direct object.

Heat words, from weak flame to deep frying

Japanese recipes describe heat by strength first. Yowabi is a weak flame, chūbi a medium one and tsuyobi a strong one, with torobi for the barest simmer. The general word for the setting is hikagen, so hikagen ni ki o tsukete kudasai means watch the heat. Because these are compounds of hi, fire, they are also how you talk about an electric hob; nobody switches vocabulary for induction.

The methods then divide by what carries the heat. Yuderu is boiling in plain water, niru is simmering in seasoned liquid, and nikomu is simmering for a long time until things soften and merge. Yaku is the broadest of all and covers grilling, baking and dry pan cooking, while itameru is stir-frying in a little oil and ageru is deep frying. Musu is steaming, and taku is used for cooking rice and for certain simmered dishes.

The seasoning order recipes assume

Japanese home cooking carries a memory aid called sashisuseso, made from the first syllable of five seasonings in the order they are commonly added: satō, shio, su, shōyu and miso. The se in the middle comes from an older spelling of shōyu, which is why the sequence looks slightly forced. The reasoning usually given is that sugar is slow to penetrate and needs to go in early, while soy sauce and miso lose their aroma if they boil hard, so they belong near the end.

You do not have to believe the chemistry to find the sequence useful, because recipes are written on the assumption that you know it. When a method says simply chōmiryō o irete nimasu, add the seasonings and simmer, it expects you to add them in that order. Practise saying the five nouns as a list, then say the two sentences that explain the reasoning, and the order will stay with you.

Note that usui and koi describe the strength of flavour, not the thickness of a sauce. A learner who says aji ga chiisai desu has translated word for word; the natural pair is usui and koi, and they are the words a Japanese cook will use when tasting your dish.

The numbered steps read aloud

Here is a complete simmered dish in the order a recipe would print it, converted into the polite forms you would actually say. Read the whole block from top to bottom in one go rather than sentence by sentence: a method is a sequence, and the connective -te forms in the middle are what make it flow as one process instead of a list of unrelated commands.

The words printed on a packet

Supermarket packaging uses a narrow set of labels, and they are worth learning before the recipe words because they affect what you buy and how long it stays safe. The two dates are the pair that matters most: shōmi kigen is a best-before date about quality, while shōhi kigen is a use-by date on perishable food. Next to them sits hozon hōhō, the storage method, often reduced to a warning such as yō reizō.

Ready meals and part-cooked items add a short section headed o-meshiagarikata, how to serve, or atatamekata, how to heat. These are written in humble and honorific forms because the packet is addressing you as a customer, which is why the verb for eat appears as meshiagaru rather than taberu. You will only ever read these, never say them, so treat them as listening-style recognition vocabulary.

Phrases you hear on cooking programmes

A Japanese cooking programme is close to ideal listening material for this vocabulary, because the presenter narrates every action as it happens and repeats the same connective phrases in every episode. The visual gives you the meaning, so you can concentrate on the sound. This is a different job from the food vocabulary you use in a restaurant, which is covered in the guide to ordering food; here the words are about producing the dish rather than choosing it.

Two of these are worth stealing for your own speech. Ato wa X dake desu is a neat way to say that only one easy thing remains, in the kitchen or anywhere else. Koko ga pointo desu works whenever you want to flag the important part of an explanation to a colleague.

Talking about what you cooked

Cooking is one of the safest small-talk topics in Japanese because everybody has an opinion and nobody expects expertise. The core sentence is simple past tense with tsukurimashita, and the interesting part is what you attach to it: how it turned out, what went wrong, and whether anyone else liked it. Note that Japanese speakers routinely undersell their own cooking, so a modest comment lands better than a proud one.

Asking someone how they made it

The single most useful question here is dō yatte tsukuru n desu ka, how do you make it. The n desu ending signals that you are asking about the background of something you have just seen or eaten, which is exactly the situation, and it sounds much warmer than the bare dō yatte tsukurimasu ka. If you want the recipe rather than a description, ask with tsukurikata o oshiete itadakemasu ka, a polite request that a colleague or a friend's parent will happily answer.

Expect the answer to be shorter than you hoped. Japanese cooks often reduce a whole method to one habit, such as slowly frying the onions or simmering it gently, so have a follow-up ready: a question about time, about heat, or about a substitute for an ingredient you cannot get. Those three follow-ups turn a one-line answer into a real conversation.

A three-week plan for kitchen Japanese

• Week one: learn the sixteen measurement rows and read one ingredient list aloud every evening, counters included.
• Week two: add the cutting words, and say noun plus shape plus ni shimasu for every vegetable you prepare.
• Week three: add the heat words, and narrate one complete dish from heating the pan to dekiagari desu.
• Photograph one supermarket packet a day and read the two dates and the storage line before you put it away.
• Watch one short cooking clip with the sound on and no subtitles, and write down every instruction ending you catch.
• Finish each week by telling somebody, in Japanese, what you cooked and asking them how they would cook it.