Cooked Kabocha

Kabocha is the Japanese winter squash. It’s one of my favorite vegetables and it’s next on my list of foods to introduce to baby.  I make a new batch of baby food once a week on Saturdays (when Aunty Joni visits), so I went to Foodland today to pick two: one for baby and the other for the big people in the house.

For kabocha-lovers, I found it on sale at Foodland for $0.99/pound, which I assume is a pretty decent deal because I later saw a Marukai ad for kabocha listing it at $1.99/pound. I’m not sure if there’s anything special about the Marukai kabocha, but that’s a pretty significant difference to me!

Kabocha

Kabocha, Japanese Winter Squash

I’ll share my Japanese style simmered kabocha recipe (for big people) today.  Kabocha makes a great side dish. It’s extremely simple with very few ingredients — my favorite kind of recipe.  The hardest part of preparing the kabocha is cutting it because the skin is so hard.  A video and entry will be forthcoming on the kabocha babyfood endeavors this weekend.

Ingredients
1 lb kabocha (my kabocha was nearly 4 lbs., so I just adjusted the measurements accordingly)
3/4 cup dashi stock
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Directions

  1. Wash kabocha skin with a vegetable brush because we will leave the skin on. Although the skin is very hard when uncooked, it becomes tender and lends a nice texture after being simmered.
  2. Cut in half and remove seeds.  Cut kabocha into 1-1/2″ cubes. Be careful ~ kabocha skin is very tough and you could easily lose a finger if you’re not careful!
  3. Put dashi soup stock, sugar, shoyu, and kabocha chunks in a pan, placing on HIGH heat and bringing to a boil.
  4. Turn heat down to LOW and allow to simmer until liquid is nearly gone.
  5. You may serve kabocha warm or cold. (I prefer it warm.)

Raw Kabocha cut in pieces

Uncooked Kabocha

Cooked Kabocha

Simmered Kabocha – tender and delicious!

Be Sociable, Share!
 

3 Responses to Kabocha

  1. [...] recently did an entry on Kabocha (Japanese Winter Squash), sharing my simple simmered kabocha recipe.  Kabocha is one of my [...]

  2. [...] this tasty and nutritious squash/pumpkin, and chose to go with a simmered kabocha recipe found on champuru.net . i didn’t have all the proper ingredients on hand so i made a few substitutions, but my [...]

  3. anne says:

    Hi, a very easy, no cutting, and extremely delicious preparation method – is to preheat your oven to 400 degrees for 10 min, wash your kobucha, wrap the whole thing up with tin-foil, put the thing in a pan filled with about 1/2 inch deep with water, then bake for 1 hour. Eat that au naturale and it’s the most velvety-smooth, creamy, sweet food you have ever tasted! :)

    FYI, the skin will be very soft and extremely tasty – highly nutritious too! :) If you like, scoop out the seeds and broil that, but I haven’t tried it.

    The whole thing can be eaten! :)

    Enjoy!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

CommentLuv badge

Dot com days

In the days before dot-net.

Reviews