Ochazuke is a simple rice dish made by pouring tea over cooked rice with toppings of your choice. The recipe includes three popular Ochazuke Recipes - Sake Chazuke (Salmon Ochazuke), Ume Chazuke (Pickled Plum Ochazuke), and Nori Chazuke (Seaweed) Ochazuke.
Total Time does not include cooking ingredients, e.g., grilling salted salmon and cooking rice, but includes the time to make a broth. Cook Time indicated is taken from Ume Chazuke which takes the longest.
- 100-120g/3.5-4.2oz cooked rice (note 1)
- 80g/2.8oz grilled salted salmon
- A knob of wasabi paste (optional)
- ½ tbsp arare for ochazuke (tiny rice crackers, note 2)
- 1 tbsp mitsuba chopped or torn (note 3)
- 200ml/6.8fl.oz hot green tea
- 100-120g/3.5-4.2oz cooked rice (note 1)
- 1 umeboshi (pickled plum, note 4)
- 2 tsp kizami nori
- 1 tsp roasted white sesame seeds
- A tbsp mitsuba chopped or torn (note 3)
- A knob of wasabi paste
- 200ml/6.8fl.oz dashi stock
- 1 tsp light soy sauce
- 1½ tsp mirin
- ¼ tsp salt
- 100-120g/3.5-4.2oz cooked rice (note 1)
- 2 tsp kizami nori
- 2 pinches shio konbu
- ½ tbsp arare sticks (tiny rice cracker sticks, note 2)
- ½ tsp instant konbu dashi powder (note 5)
- 1 pinch matcha powder (optional)
- ⅛ tsp salt
- 200ml/6.8fl.oz boiling water
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Break the grilled salmon into a few bite-size chunks.
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Place rice in a serving bowl (note 6).
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Put the salmon pieces on the rice, piling them up in the centre. Then place wasabi on the salmon pieces.
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Scatter arare and mitsuba over the rice.
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Pour hot green tea over and serve immediately.
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Remove the seed from the umeboshi and discard it. Chop the flesh into small pieces (it’s easier to eat but you don't have to chop it if you prefer).
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Put the Dashi Broth ingredients in a saucepan and bring it to a boil.
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Place rice in a serving bowl (note 6).
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Sprinkle sesame seeds and kizami nori over the rice.
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Place the umebosh in the centre, then place wasabi on the umeboshi.
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Pour the broth over and serve immediately.
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Place rice in a serving bowl (note 6).
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Scatter kizami nori, shio konbu, and arare over the rice.
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Put the Konbu Dashi Broth ingredients in a jar or a sauce pan and mix well, ensuring that powders are completely dissolved.
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Pour the broth over the rice and serve immediately.
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You will need a piece of omochi (rice cake) cut into a standard size (4cm x 6xm x 2cm / 1½" x 2⅜" x ¾" cuboid). You can buy a pack of cut omochi from Japanese/Asian grocery stores.
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Slice the omochi piece into 3mm/⅛" thick pieces, then cut each slice into 3mm/⅛" wide long batons.
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Taking several batons at one time, align and cut them into 3mm/⅛" cubes.
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If making arare sticks, cut omochi into 1.5mm/1⁄16" wide, 2-3cm/¾-1⅛" long batons.
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Spread tiny omochi cubes on a baking tray lined with a piece of baking paper. Leave it on a table/work bench 1-2 days to dry.
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Heat the oven to 180°C/356°F and bake the omochi pieces for about 20 minutes, until the surface of the arare piece becomes golden brown. You may want to toss a couple of times so that the omochi pieces are browned all the way around.
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Let them cool down.
1. If your rice is direct from the fridge or frozen, it needs to be warmed up. For Ochazuke, body temperature works the best. If the rice is too hot, it tends to become starchy when boiling tea/broth is poured over it.
2. Arare (あられ) is a generic name for small rice crackers (see the photo in post). The smallest one is a tiny ball of about 3mm/⅛" in diameter. It is called ‘ochazuke arare’ or ‘bubu arare’. The other arare are tiny sticks of 1.5mm/1⁄16" wide, 2-3cm/¾-1⅛" long.
You can buy a small bag of these tiny arare in Japan with no trouble, but it is probably very difficult to find it outside of Japan. Since arare are tiny rice crackers, you can make them from a rice cake. See the Instructions under the heading, How to Make Ochazuke Arare/Bubu Arare.
Alternatively, you can crush some rice crackers into smaller pieces and use them.
3. Instead of mitsuba, you can use finely chopped green onions.
4. There are different sizes and textures of umeboshi, but mid-size soft umeboshi works the best.
5. Konbu dashi powder contains not only powdered konbu but also salt and sugar. So, if you are using home-made konbu dashi as an alternative, you need to add a small amount of salt and sugar to it.
6. Use a bowl that is slightly larger than a standard rice bowl so that you have a sufficient margin from the rim of the bowl when the broth/tea is added.
7. It makes much more than required for Ochazuke, but you can use them as toppings for a thick soup and an alternative to breadcrumbs for deep-frying dish.