Tsukudani
What is Tsukudani?
Tsukudani (佃煮・つくだ煮・つくだに) is seafood, meat,
vegetables, insects, etc., simmered in a sweet and spicy sauce with soy sauce, sake, sugar, etc.
It is one of Japan’s traditional foods and a typical preserved food.
It is a specialty of Tsukudajima in Edo (Tokyo), and the name comes from there.
In the days before refrigerators, it became widely used as a food that could be preserved.
As it is a traditional food from an era before refrigerators, it is often very flavorful, sweet and salty, with the aim of increasing its shelf life and making it easy to accompany white rice.
Ingredients used for Tsukudani include
fish and small fish (goby, smelt, whitebait, carp, crucian carp, bonito, tuna, icefish, sand lance, conger eel, eel),
shrimp, krill, kelp, seaweed, shellfish (clams, mussels), shiitake mushrooms, butterbur, burdock, lotus,
locusts, bee larvae, cicadas, silkworm pupae,
beef, etc.
There are also tsukudani made from green chili peppers and leaf chili peppers.
Tsukudani smelt（Wakasagi no Tsukudani）
Tsukudani shrimp (Ebi no Tsukudani)
Tsukudani tuna（Maguro no Tsukudani）
