Okonomiyaki

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Okonomiyaki

is a Japanese savoury pancake

Pancake

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Okonomiyaki Shrimp and Cheese Okonomiyaki

is a Japanese savoury pancake

Pancake

A pancake is a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Pancakes exist in several variations in many different local cuisines....
containing a variety of ingredients. The name is derived from the word okonomi, meaning "what you like" or "what you want", and yaki meaning "grilled" or "cooked" (cf. yakitori
Yakitori

, grilled bird, is a Japanese cuisine type of skewered chicken.It is made from several bite-sized pieces of chicken meat, or chicken offal, skewered on a bamboo skewer and barbecued, usually over charcoal....
and yakisoba
Yakisoba

, literally "fried noodles", is a dish often sold at festivals in Japan, but originates from China. The dish was derived by the Chinese from the traditional chow mein, but has been more heavily integrated into Japanese cuisine like ramen....
). Okonomiyaki is mainly associated with Kansai or Hiroshima areas of Japan, but is widely available throughout the country. Toppings and batters tend to vary according to region.

Kansai area

Kansai (Osaka

Osaka

is a Cities of Japan in Japan, located at the mouth of the Yodo River on Osaka Bay, in the Kansai region of the main island of Honshu.Osaka is a City designated by government ordinance under the Local Autonomy Law and the capital city of Osaka Prefecture....
)-style okonomiyaki is the predominant style of the dish, found throughout most of Japan. The batter is made of flour, grated yam

Yam (vegetable)

Yam is the common name for some species in the genus Dioscorea .These are perennial plant herbaceous vines cultivated for the consumption of their starchy tubers in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania....
, water or dashi

Dashi

Dashi is a class of soup and cooking stocks considered fundamental to Japanese cuisine. Shizuo Tsuji wrote in 1980 that "many substitutes for dashi are possible, but without dashi, dishes are merely a la japonaise and lack the authentic flavor." Dashi forms the base for miso soups, clear broth soups, Japanese noodle broths, and ma...
, eggs and shredded cabbage, and usually contains other ingredients such as green onion, meat

Meat

In modern English usage, meat most often refers to animal biological tissue used as food, mostly skeletal muscle and associated fat, but it may also refer to offal, including livers, skin, brains, bone marrow, kidneys, in some countries lungs, and a variety of other internal organs as well as blood....
(generally pork or bacon), octopus

Octopus

The octopus is a cephalopod of the order Octopoda that inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. The term may also refer to only those creatures in the genus Octopus ....
, squid

Squid

Squid are marine cephalopods of the order Teuthida, which comprises around 300 species. Like all other cephalopods, squid have a distinct head, Symmetry #Bilateral_symmetry, a mantle , and cephalopod arms....
, shrimp

Shrimp

Shrimp are swimming, Decapoda crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh water and seawater. Adult shrimp are Filter feeder benthic animals living close to the bottom....
, vegetable

Vegetable

The term "vegetable" generally means the Eating parts of plants. The definition of the word is traditional rather than scientific, however, and therefore the usage of the word is somewhat arbitrary and subjective, as it is determined by individual cultural customs of food selection and food preparation....
s, kimchi

Kimchi

Kimchi, also spelled gimchi or kimchee, is a traditional Korean pickled dish made of vegetables with varied seasonings, most commonly referring to the spicy baechu variety....
, mochi or cheese

Cheese

Cheese is a food consisting of proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cattle, Water Buffalo, goats, or sheep's milk. It is produced by Coagulation of the milk protein casein....
. Okonomiyaki is sometimes compared to an omelette

Omelette

An omelette or omelet is a preparation of beaten Egg cooked with butter or Cooking oil in a frying pan, usually folded around a filling such as cheese, vegetables, meat , or some combination of the above....
or a pancake

Pancake

A pancake is a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Pancakes exist in several variations in many different local cuisines....
and may be referred to as "a Japanese pancake", or even "Osaka soul food".

Most okonomiyaki restaurants are set up as grill-it-yourself establishments, where the server produces a bowl of raw ingredients that the customer mixes and grills at tables fitted with teppan, or special hotplates. They may also have a diner style counter where the cook will prepare the dish right in front of the customers.

In Osaka

Osaka

is a Cities of Japan in Japan, located at the mouth of the Yodo River on Osaka Bay, in the Kansai region of the main island of Honshu.Osaka is a City designated by government ordinance under the Local Autonomy Law and the capital city of Osaka Prefecture....
(the largest city in the Kansai region), where this dish is said to have originated, okonomiyaki is prepared much like a pancake

Pancake

A pancake is a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Pancakes exist in several variations in many different local cuisines....
. The batter and other ingredients are fried on both sides on either a hot plate (teppan) or a pan using metal spatula

Spatula

A turner , or fish slice, is a kitchen utensil with a long handle and a broad flat edge, used for lifting fried foods. Though the word Spatula is used in British English, it refers solely to a mixing and spreading implement....
s that are later used to slice the dish when it has finished cooking. Cooked okonomiyaki is topped with ingredients that include okonomiyaki sauce (similar to Worcestershire sauce

Worcestershire sauce

Worcestershire sauce is a fermentation liquid condiment first made at 68 Broad Street, Worcester by two dispensing chemists, John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins....
but thicker and sweeter), aonori

Aonori

Aonori or green laver is a type of edible green seaweed, including species from the genera Monostroma and Enteromorpha of Ulvaceae....
(seaweed flakes), katsuobushi

Katsuobushi

is the Japanese language name for a preparation of dried, Fermentation , and smoked skipjack tuna . Katsuobushi and kombu are the main ingredients of dashi, a broth that forms the basis of many soups and sauces in Japanese cuisine....
(fish flakes), Japanese mayonnaise and pickled ginger (beni shoga

Beni shoga

Beni shoga is a type of tsukemono . It is made from ginger cut into thin strips, coloured red, and pickled in umezu , the pickling solution used to make umeboshi; the red colour is derived from red perilla....
).

Variants

When served with a layer of fried noodles (either yakisoba

Yakisoba

, literally "fried noodles", is a dish often sold at festivals in Japan, but originates from China. The dish was derived by the Chinese from the traditional chow mein, but has been more heavily integrated into Japanese cuisine like ramen....
or udon

Udon

Scallion

A scallion, also commonly known as spring onion, green onion, or salad onion, is associated with various members of the genus Allium that lack a fully-developed bulb....
s; compare Korean pajeon

Pajeon

Pajeon is a variety of jeon , a pancake-like Korean dish made mostly of Egg and flour, with green onion similar to a Chinese cuisine Green onion pancake....
and Chinese green onion pancake

Green onion pancake

A green onion pancake is a Basic taste, non-Leavening agent Chinese cuisine flatbread folded with cooking oil and minced scallions . Unlike a true pancake, it is made from dough instead of batter , similar to the Indian cuisine paratha....
s.

Hiroshima area

In Hiroshima

Hiroshima

The Japanese city of is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chugoku region of western Honshu, the largest of Japan's islands....
, the ingredients are layered rather than mixed together. The layers are typically batter, cabbage, pork, and optional items such as squid, octopus, and cheese. Noodles (yakisoba

Yakisoba

Udon

is a type of thick wheat-flour noodle popular in Japanese cuisine.Udon is usually served hot as noodle soup in a mildly flavoured broth, in its simplest form as kake udon, served in kakejiru made of dashi, soy sauce , and mirin....
) are also used as a topping with fried egg and a generous amount of okonomiyaki sauce. The amount of cabbage used is usually 3 to 4 times the amount used in the more common Osaka style. It starts out piled very high and is pushed down as the cabbage cooks. The order of the layers may vary slightly depending on the chef's style and preference, and ingredients will vary depending on the preference of the customer. People from Hiroshima claim that this is the correct way to make okonomiyaki. This style is also called Hiroshima-yaki or Hiroshima-okonomi.

Other areas

In Tokyo

Tokyo

, officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan of Japan and located on the eastern side of the main island Honshu. The twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, cover the area that was once the Tokyo City in the eastern part of the prefecture, and total over 8 million people....
, Tsukishima

Tsukishima

Tsukishima is a place located in Chuo, Tokyo, Japan. It is an island formed of Reclaimed land completed in 1892, using earth from the dredging work performed to create a shipping channel in Tokyo Bay....
town is popular for both Okonomiyaki and Monjayaki

Monjayaki

is a type of Japanese pan-fried batter with various ingredients. It is similar to okonomiyaki but monjayaki, a specialty of the Kanto region, is made with a dough more liquid than is okonomiyaki....
. Monjayaki is a liquid, runny variant of okonomiyaki. The main street of this town is called Monja Street.

In Hamamatsu, takuan

Takuan

, also known as Takuwan, is a popular traditional Japanese people pickle. It is made from daikon radish. In addition to being served alongside other types of tsukemono in traditional Japanese cuisine, takuan is also enjoyed at the end of meals as it is thought to aid digestion....
(pickled daikon

Daikon

is the Japanese name for a mild-flavored, very large, white, East Asian radish. Despite being known most commonly by its Japanese name, it did not originate in Japan, but rather in continental Asia....
) is mixed in okonomiyaki.

In Okinawa, okonomiyaki is called hirayachi

Hirayachi

is an Okinawan cuisine very simple pancake-like dish based on Egg s, flour, salt, Black pepper and green onions, fried with a little oil in a pan. It is similar to a very simple type of okonomiyaki....
and is thinner than in other areas. People cook it at home, so there are no hirayachi restaurants in Okinawa, although okonomiyaki restaurants can be found in a few places.

External links

- a manufacturer of okonomiyaki sauce. Recipes of Hiroshima- and Kansai-styles, and monjayaki.

Okonomiyaki

Kansai area

Variants

Hiroshima area

Other areas

See also

External links