I’m finally joining the slow cooker bandwagon! Many friends in the US have a slow cooker in their kitchen and they’ve been telling me to get one. However slow cookers are not common in Japan and I did not grow up using them. Maybe it’s because most kitchens are quite small and there is no space for another small appliance. I received my slow cooker a few months ago and I’ve been testing out Japanese recipes with it and it’s been fun, and amazingly easy! Today I’ll share this Slow Cooker Chicken Wings and Daikon (鶏手羽と大根の煮物).
Making Nimono With A Slow Cooker
In Japan, simmered dishes are called Nimono (煮物) and a typical home-cooked meal usually includes one or more nimono dishes. For simmered dishes that contain both vegetables and meat, we usually cook for 20-30 minutes at most. Sometimes people do use a pressure cooker to cook ingredients “faster” but we don’t really cook them “slowly.” Before using the slow cooker to test out recipes, I had one big concern about cooking Japanese food in a slow cooker. Will the ingredients become too salty being cooked for such a long time? For Japanese cuisine, one of the fundamentals is that the taste of the ingredients themselves is very important. We tend to be careful not to overcook the fresh ingredients and not to overpower the original taste of ingredients. Due to this, Japanese food can be considered “bland” for some people especially if you’re used to seasoning food with lots of spices and seasonings. Despite my concerns, the dish didn’t come out too salty. The chicken wings were really tender and the meat came off the bone very easily after cooking for 5 hours. The daikon was also very tender, yet still kept its shape in the pot and absorbed all the umami juice coming from the chicken and dashi. If you don’t own a slow cooker, you can simply simmer the ingredients in a regular pot for 20-30 minutes. The meat will not come off the bone, but it’s still delicious and it’s one of my favorite simmered dishes!
What Slow Cooker Do I Use:
If you are wondering what slow cooker I own, I received this IP-DUO60 from the Instant Pot. It has both a slow cooker and a pressure cooker function. I was hesitant to get it but Mr. JOC heard from co-workers saying they loved this particular model and use it almost daily. Here are my favorite things about this slow cooker so far:
Ingredients Substitutions
For this dish, you can make it vegetarian or vegan by omitting chicken and egg (for vegan) and replacing them with all kinds of root vegetables such as carrots, radishes, turnips, etc. If you want to add leafy or soft vegetables, add them toward the end of cooking so you won’t overcook them. In Japan, this particular dish always includes both chicken wings and daikon. You can use other types of meat if you like. Daikon can be found in Japanese grocery stores as well as other Asian grocery stores, especially Chinese and Korean ones. Daikon releases moisture while being cooked, and absorbs all the flavors back so it’s a perfect ingredient for all kinds of Japanese simmered dishes. Try finding daikon for this dish, but if you still can’t find it, you can replace it with other root vegetables of your choice. Wish to learn more about Japanese cooking? Sign up for our free newsletter to receive cooking tips & recipe updates! And stay in touch with me on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram.
