I’ve made a variety of Asian meatballs in the past, including Just One Cookbook’s teriyaki chicken meatballs, and Omnivore Cookbook’s Mongolian beef meatballs, which have all been incredible. I’m sure I will return to these recipes again for you all, but in the meantime, trust me, they’re delicious. I’m also a massive fan of anything glazed. “Glazed” has such delightful connotations – sweet, sticky, shiny, finger-licking goodness. I would glaze everything if I could. But alas.
Upon reading this, it’s probably no surprise that I was very excited to try this recipe from Harumi Kurihara’s Everyday Harumi cookbook (page 56)!
So how is tsukune made?
The teriyaki sauce was comprised of just 3 ingredients: soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Boiled together until thickened and sticky. I made double the amount of teriyaki sauce so I had to guess the reduction time. However, when the sauce thickens you will notice it starts to hold its bubbles and creep up the sides of your saucepan. Make sure it doesn’t overflow!!
Next up, tsukune making! Minced beef, minced pork, chopped onion and celery, eggs, flour, basil, salt and pepper get mixed in a bowl and formed into hamburger-eque patties. These are then fried until golden on each side. Remove from the pan and dunk into the teriyaki glaze. Yum yum!! I must admit, I was curious to see the addition of basil in a Japanese recipe but it works really well.
This was all served with sticky rice (I use Yumenishiki brand), a lemon wedge, and a dusting of the Japanese spice mix known as shichimi togarashi. Mm mmm.
Drumroll please…
I give this recipe 4 stars.
The teriyaki sauce was incredible, but I think that is more to do with the quality of the ingredients I used more than anything. The tsukune themselves were delicious, and complimented the sticky white rice well. However, I have one small gripe with the recipe…
Unfortunately, Harumi did not include a cooking time for the tsukune. It was just “until brown on both sides”. I feel relatively comfortable taking guesstimates in this area but I suspect that novice chefs might struggle with cooking times. I have witnessed many a novice undercook sausages and end up with food poisoning, and that’s when they DO have cooking times available, printed on the packet! I’m not sure I’d trust them to guess!!
I suspect this might be related to the fact Harumi did not mention how thick the patties should be either, only that they should be 5cm in diameter. My only advice is to use your best judgement! I believe in you!
