Japanese-Style Cream Stew Made with Just Chicken Thighs and Napa Cabbage, Without Butter or Garlic

The ingredients are napa cabbage, chicken thighs, and unsweetened soy milk. Regular milk works if you don't have soy milk, though he says milk gives a slightly thinner result. Ryuji says he hasn't made cream stew very often. Ebisu had "a Chinese image" of the dish from store-bought seasoning mixes, but Ryuji explains that this time he is making it Japanese-style.

What Ryuji has in mind is a creamy napa cabbage stew he was served at an obanzai restaurant when he traveled to Kure, Hiroshima. It is more home cooking than Chinese food, and he himself says it is "not very Buzz Recipe-like." It contains neither garlic nor ginger. According to Ryuji, viewers are probably expecting "he's going to add garlic anyway," so this time he deliberately left it out and went with a Japanese-style cream. He also says that lately he only wants to make things that are "simple, yet deep in flavor," repeating, "Simple is hyper important."

Asked which part of the napa cabbage to use for a simmered dish, Ebisu answered "the bottom," but Ryuji's answer was "the inside." The inner leaves are soft and turn meltingly tender when simmered. He uses around 350g this time, saving the outer leaves for a hot pot later. Ryuji explains that the outer leaves taste fine in dishes that simmer for a long time, like hot pot, but this dish turns out better with the inner part. That said, he notes it's fine to cut the cabbage lengthwise and use a balanced mix from outside to inside.

As for the black specks that appear on napa cabbage, he explained that they are polyphenols and nothing to worry about, and that they don't mean the cabbage is old. When he weighed it again, it came to about 500g, so he cut it back to about 400g.

To cut it, he removes the core and then slices it at an angle working outward. He says slicing at an angle creates larger cut surfaces, which works well. In simmered dishes the yellow part is delicious, and Ryuji calls this area "the toro part." For the chicken, he recommends thighs. Drumettes would also be tasty simmered with it, but they're a hassle to eat.

He arranges the salted and peppered chicken thighs in an unheated frying pan and then turns on the heat. No oil is used. Dishes like this tend to call for butter, but Ryuji flatly states, "You don't need it." Adding butter makes the flavor heavier and raises the calories. Fat renders out of the chicken skin, so it sears perfectly well without additional oil. He cooks it until it's browned all over.

Once it's browned, he adds the cabbage. A rough guide for the amount is about 1/8 of a napa cabbage, with large leaves torn by hand. He says the cabbage soaking up the chicken fat and savory flavor is what makes it delicious. Ryuji says oil has been getting hard on him lately, so he wants to do some slightly healthier recipes too. Soy milk isn't very high in calories yet makes things rich, so in his view this is a cream stew that still leans toward the weight-loss side. As it cooks, the inner leaves get coated in chicken fat and become silky.

Once the cabbage has wilted, he adds 1 teaspoon of Hondashi and 1 teaspoon of kombu dashi. It doesn't have to be Hondashi; any bonito dashi is fine. The idea is like adding a blended dashi, and he says this dish lets the dashi flavor carry it.

Next, he adds 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour and stir-fries. Asked why he isn't using potato starch, Ryuji explains that thickening with potato starch basically pushes a dish in a Chinese direction, but since this is Japanese food, he chose flour. It's not that you can't make it with potato starch. He then listed the advantage of flour: potato starch is broken down by saliva, so dishes like mapo tofu turn watery toward the end as you eat. Something thickened with flour never turns watery, so Ryuji says he prefers flour.

Once the flour has blended in and everything is thick and silky, he adds the soy milk (250cc in the recipe in the description). If you want to add mushrooms, oyster mushrooms or button mushrooms work well. Simmering it gently brings out the thickness, and Ryuji stresses that since there's no butter or consommé in it, it doesn't get heavy. He also cares about the color turning out nicely.

Since Ryuji is a drinker, he adds a pinch of salt, but those who prefer a lighter flavor can leave it out. Once the thickness has come through evenly, he sprinkles on black pepper and it's done. Ryuji says it's "my favorite of my recent recipes," and notes that while it serves 2 to 3 people, he'd finish it in two sittings himself.

During the cooking, Ebisu is drinking an 8% can and has gone bright red, and Ryuji eggs him on to stop being shy and drink more. Ebisu keeps putting on a brave face, and the conversation goes as far as suggesting they should always have him drink a can at the start of every shoot.

While plating, Ebisu says that when he goes to a Chinese restaurant he never orders cream stew, instead ordering ramen, gyoza, fried rice, and even mapo tofu on top of that, prompting Ryuji to retort, "That's overdoing it." Ryuji remarked that as you get older you come to like dishes like this, but young people probably still prefer things like abura soba.

After tasting it, Ebisu says the inner core part has become meltingly soft, and he now understands why it matters which part you use. His impression was that the dashi flavor is strong enough to make it go well with rice, and that it's rich without being too oily, so it goes down easily.

Ryuji recommends yuzu kosho as "a way to make it five times tastier." He says that adding a little to change things up works well because the dish is Japanese-style, so the yuzu aroma and tartness pair nicely with it. Ebisu was surprised at how well they go together and said he could probably eat it to the end without getting tired of it.

Asked whether making it with milk would make it thinner, Ryuji answered that soy milk concentrates the more it simmers, so milk does make it thinner, but if you reduce it, it gets quite close. Since there's flour in it too, milk is fine. It's also good poured over rice and shoveled in, and it goes with bread. However, he explains that it isn't as creamy as everyone might think; it tastes closer to a Japanese-style cream, or a rich soy milk hot pot.

Ryuji reflects that three years ago he would have added butter and garlic, but he decided to stop. That version is tasty in its own way, but the reason is that you get tired of it. If you eat nothing but Buzz Recipes every day, he says, sometimes you'll want to eat Akari Hasegawa's food.

According to Ryuji, if you eat nothing but umami-heavy dishes, you start craving dishes with restrained umami, and conversely, if it's all restrained-umami dishes, you start missing umami-heavy ones. When you're worn out from a run of eating out on junk food and convenience store meals, eating something like udon in carefully made dashi restores you all at once. But if that continues, you want to go to the convenience store again. He says this back-and-forth is a good thing. That's why, in Ryuji's view, cooks who don't use umami seasonings and he himself are surprisingly compatible, and there are actually people who alternate between eating both.

Finally, when they checked Ebisu's can, it turned out that while Ryuji's was 8%, Ebisu's was 6%, prompting the retort, "What are you doing at 6%?" Ryuji said this cream stew keeps for 2 to 3 days in the fridge and is the kind of dish that would be served as obanzai, so you can just reheat it in the microwave when you eat it, and he closed by encouraging everyone to make it while napa cabbage is in season.