"Infinite Salt Nagaimo" for a Summer Day Off, Plus Miso Soup with a Whole Head of Lettuce: Ryuji on Prepping Nagaimo and the "Right Answer" in Cooking

There was a nagaimo at the shoot that nobody remembered buying. According to the staff, it was Ryuji himself who had earlier asked in the group LINE chat for someone to buy one. Since the staff member said they wanted to eat "nagaimo itself" rather than just vegetables in general, Ryuji chose, from among his nagaimo recipes, a marinade recipe that works both as a main dish and as a snack with drinks.

Ryuji describes the recipe as perfect for summer, good even chilled, and enough to make a full meal with just this and rice. As the reason nagaimo goes well with rice, he points to tororo gohan (grated yam over rice). If tororo makes you want to keep eating rice, then nagaimo is naturally a good match for rice, the reasoning goes. The recipe uses 320g of nagaimo, and the whole piece gets marinated.

Ryuji says nagaimo skin is edible. When making tororo, you peel it all off, but this time it's better to leave the skin on and eat it. To do that, you need to deal with the hairs on the surface.

You can either stick a fork into the nagaimo and sear the surface over an open flame, or cook it in a frying pan. Searing burns the hairs, and then lightly rubbing the surface removes them cleanly. In the demonstration, the charred hairs fell off in little bits, and the staff member laughed that it was "like hair removal." According to Ryuji, leftover hairs affect the texture, but searing takes care of the problem. He stresses that this one extra step makes the finished marinade "several times better."

A slicer is used for cutting. Cutting by hand is fine, but Ryuji says a slicer is best. He used a setting that cuts at 0.8mm, and the slices came out about as thin as potato chips. It's hard to get them this thin by hand.

The reason for slicing so thin is that it makes the flavor soak in far better. Ryuji calls this "my new proposal for nagaimo." The staff member was surprised that it turned into proper slices instead of mush, and said they had never eaten nagaimo this thin. Ryuji added that it doesn't have to be this thin, but he thinks it tastes better this thin. They also mentioned it would probably be good deep-fried like potato chips, but that was just an idea that came up in the moment.

Since slicing all the way to the end risks cutting your hand, the end piece wasn't forced through and was set aside separately.

The sliced nagaimo can be eaten raw, so they first sprinkled it with Ajishio and tasted it. It was so good that both of them said it was "too much of an all-purpose seasoning."

As for the seasoning from here, Ryuji prefaces by noting that soy sauce marinades are the most common. The staff member said they could imagine the taste of a dashi-soy marinade, but since a dashi-soy marinade had already been featured on his channel, this time they decided to season it with salt. The staff member said they couldn't imagine the taste of a salt marinade at all, which is exactly why they wanted to try it.

There are several options for how to give it a salty flavor. You can marinate it with ume plum, or finish it with chicken bouillon and kombu dashi. They almost settled on chicken bouillon and kombu dashi, but Ryuji corrected himself, saying "bonito dashi would work too," and ultimately decided to use Hondashi and chicken bouillon.

Since there is about 300g of nagaimo, 2/3 teaspoon each of Hondashi and chicken bouillon is added, and everything is tossed once at this point. It's better to have a bit of liquid, so some is added, but water is used rather than sake or mirin. Ryuji explains this is because he wants to emphasize the saltiness. When the staff member asked how it could be salty without adding salt, he answered that chicken bouillon and Hondashi contain quite a lot of salt. Mixing carefully spreads it throughout, he says.

The two also talked about how this isn't something you'd make in winter, and it's precisely because summer is approaching that you crave it. The staff member said nagaimo tastes good because it's marinated in dashi and doesn't have much flavor on its own, and Ryuji agreed that the same goes for tororo.

When the staff member asked whether it would be marinated for a long time, Ryuji replied, "This stuff is so good that it doesn't need marinating." He adds dried red chili for color and a little kick. Because the nagaimo is thin, it breaks easily, so care is taken when mixing. About 3 tablespoons of water spreads throughout and gives it the look of a proper marinade. Finally, a pinch of salt is added. Ryuji explains it's because he's a drinker. Scattering chopped green onions on top makes it more or less done, he says. You can also add pepper or the like when eating, to taste.

Being ready to eat right after mixing is another advantage of this recipe, and since it's even better chilled, it was put in the fridge to cool.

Ryuji thought nagaimo alone wouldn't provide enough nutrition. So he decided to make miso soup with a head of red leaf lettuce (about 250g) that had been left over after being bought for another dish.

The lettuce is washed and lightly squeezed, and the parts of the core that aren't tough go in too. For a salad you'd spin it dry in a salad spinner, but for miso soup that's unnecessary since you're adding water anyway. Ryuji recommends it, saying that eating a whole head of lettuce raw is tough, but in miso soup it shrinks down to almost nothing, so you can eat the whole thing. The staff member had never had lettuce miso soup. As for red leaf lettuce, the staff member said they like it because it's softer and less watery than regular lettuce.

First, 500cc of water was added. Wanting a bit more substance, bacon is added in place of meat. According to Ryuji, bacon miso soup is commonly eaten in Okinawa. The bacon is also torn by hand instead of cut with a knife. That day, not even a cutting board came out. Ryuji says, "This is all a day-off meal needs to be," adding that it's better to make something easy that tastes good with rice. The bacon gives off a nice broth. Since there's so much lettuce, more water was added for a total of 600cc.

While the miso soup simmered, the staff member opened up about a concern regarding making the videos. When staff ask things like "What do you do with this?" during cooking, people sometimes write in the comments, "So dumb" or "Why would you even ask that?" The staff member said they've been thinking lately that they actually know the answers and are asking anyway.

Ryuji replied that it's no different from watching a TV drama and saying "That would never happen," so there's no need to worry about it. The staff are deliberately "playing dumb," and the job couldn't be done otherwise. If they acted as though they knew everything, the questions would disappear, and there would be no point in having staff there at all, in his view. The staff member also said they ask questions while thinking about where beginner cooks are likely to stumble.

For the miso soup's broth, he switched things up from usual and added 1 1/2 teaspoons of iriko dashi. Asked whether they knew what iriko is, the staff member answered niboshi (dried sardines). Ryuji said using iriko dashi changes the flavor of miso soup, and after mentioning that he does sponsored work (a corporate tie-up) for this product, said it's good to make miso soup with this kind of dashi every now and then.

On the amount of miso, the staff member said they add more when making things like tonjiru. Ryuji answered that the amount of miso in miso soup depends on the situation, and from there began sharing his views on the "right answer" in cooking. There's no single right answer in cooking; whatever you think tastes good is the right answer, and everyone can decide the seasoning for themselves. However, many people don't know what the right answer is, so they look to recipes for answers. The role of a culinary researcher is to find those answers and present them as "This is the right answer." But if you take that at face value, you end up only being able to trust that one person. That's why he tells people to watch other cooks' videos too, and he isn't the only one who's right. "There are as many right answers as there are cooks," Ryuji said.

After tasting, the miso ended up at about 2 tablespoons. Ryuji also remarked that young people these days apparently don't drink miso soup.

Following the talk about right answers, the staff member shared their own experience. Since childhood, their mother had taken them to all kinds of restaurants, sometimes even fairly nice ones. Their mother would say, "Even when cooking at home, you won't know if you don't know the taste," and "You can't make delicious food if you don't know delicious food," encouraging them to eat lots of good food. The staff member said that, for example, even if you don't know what flavor you're aiming for when making namul, having eaten it at restaurants might make it easier to arrive at your own right answer.

Ryuji called this "a good mom" and "thanks to your mother," and agreed that it's better to go to restaurants. Culinary researchers don't just cook at home; they go out to eat a lot too, he said.

Since the miso soup would be eaten with the salt marinade this time, it was finished with the salt kept on the lighter side.

For the rice, rice cooked at home and frozen is used. Ryuji says that if you want to enjoy a vegetable-centered meal, the rice should be good, and nothing beats freshly cooked rice. That said, in a pinch, packaged microwave rice is fine too.

Here an egg was separated into yolk and white, but with the first egg the yolk slipped right out, and Ryuji lamented, "I've created food waste." After making a little hollow and trying again, the second attempt went well.

Not wanting to waste the egg white, he mixes it into the piping-hot rice. Once mixed in, you won't notice the egg white at all, Ryuji says. There's also a nutritional reason for adding it. This menu has no real meat to speak of, so it's short on protein. Since it's best to get protein at every meal if you can, the idea is to make up for it with the egg white.

Pile plenty of chilled nagaimo on top of the egg-white rice, place the yolk on top, and the "ultimate salt nagaimo rice" is done. The staff member said it was "basically tororo gohan," but Ryuji shot back, "Totally different." The miso soup turned into a bowl packed with lettuce. If you want to eat lots of vegetables, soups are the way to go, since cooked vegetables are easy to eat in large amounts, Ryuji says. He also mentioned that many viewers have been asking for vegetable-based recipes.

Upon tasting, the staff member was surprised by how crunchy it was and said the nagaimo alone was plenty delicious.

At this point, Ryuji brought out Ajinomoto's "Seto no Honjio." Its grains are large and clump together nicely, making it well suited for sprinkling directly on food, he says. Ryuji explained that sprinkling on just a tiny bit makes the dashi flavor come through clearly. The staff member who tried it reacted, "It instantly got sharper." Ryuji said that's the advantage of coarse salt, and that it's enjoyed differently from fine, powdery salt, recommending that viewers try "finishing salt," sprinkled on afterward. But don't overdo it; just a little is enough, he says.

Ryuji says Seto no Honjio is a domestic salt made from Japanese seawater, and that Ajishio is domestic too. It also came up that Ajinomoto had invited him to tour their factory in the Setouchi region, and had suggested September.

On the lettuce miso soup, the staff member said iriko dashi elevates it; Hondashi feels like "your usual miso soup," but iriko tastes restaurant-like, like something from a ryotei. Ryuji said iriko dashi is worth buying just for miso soup, and that lately he's been making a point of using it. According to the staff member, iriko dashi had previously only appeared a little, in tsukemen and namul, aside from the sponsored content. Ryuji also noted that this menu uses no oil.

Asked by the staff member how long it keeps, Ryuji answered that it lasts about 4 days. It's a common thing with marinated dishes that they over-marinate and become salty toward the end, but that doesn't happen with this recipe, he says. Because the nagaimo is so thin, the flavor penetrates all the way through right away, so it's already at its most marinated the moment it's made. Ryuji says another key point is that no marinating time is needed and you can eat it right after mixing.

As for salt content, as you can see from the recipe, it's low; for a marinated dish, Ryuji estimates it's "probably not even 1%" relative to the 300g. Making it with soy sauce makes the salt content considerably higher. This time it was made on the lighter side with dashi, with salt sprinkled on to taste when eating.

Ryuji usually uses a lot of garlic, but this recipe doesn't need any, he says; it's enjoyable on the umami of the dashi, nagaimo, and salt. The staff member said that without garlic it would also be good for breakfast, and Ryuji responded, "This is fine for every day" and "Let's make more meals like this." It's also good with soy sauce poured over the top, and salt or soy sauce is fine depending on preference. The leftover egg yolk was later dropped into the miso soup and eaten.

Finally, they mentioned that this video would probably be released around summer. At the time of filming it was late May and already hot, but Ryuji's channel generally films about two months in advance. Ryuji said he'd like to include more videos of everyday meals like this whenever he has free time, and wrapped up the video by once again recommending this recipe, which takes little effort and uses few seasonings.