Dressed in a savory & nutty sesame sauce, Broccolini Gomaae is a delicious vegetable side dish that goes well with everything. You’d only need 15 min to prepare from start to finish!
When I plan out the meals for the week, usually I can choose the main dishes fairly quickly but the challenging part is always the side dish(es) for me. If you are stuck with making the same the side dishes too often, I hope you’ll try this easy and appetizing Broccolini Gomaae (ブロッコリーニの胡麻和え).
Watch How to Make Broccolini Gomaae
Delectable broccolini dressed in a savory and nutty sesame sauce.
Gomaae (pronounced “go-maa-e”) literally means “dressed in sesame sauce” in Japanese. The nutty, sweet and savory sesame sauce enhances the flavor of blanched or steamed green vegetables.
When blanched spinach is dressed in sesame sauce, it’s Spinach Gomaae (Horenso no Gomaae). When green beans are dressed in sesame sauce, it’s Green Bean Gomaae (Ingen no Gomaae).
I created this dish out of an accident. I was going to make Green Bean Gomaae, but I realized that my green beans went bad already. Then I found a big bag of organic broccolini from Costco in the fridge and thought I’d use it instead. Broccolini and gomaae complemented each other really well and it’s been one of our favorite side dishes since. You can also make this same dish with regular broccoli.
Broccolini is a green vegetable similar to broccoli, but it has smaller florets and longer thin stalks. I didn’t know this until researching for this post but broccolini was originally developed in Yokohama, Japan (my home!) in the early ’90s (source). The end result is a hybrid of broccoli and Chinese broccoli. If you love broccoli or Chinese broccoli, you’ll love this veggie. It has the texture of Chinese broccoli but without the bitter taste, more similar to the flavors of regular broccoli.
It has lots of vitamin C, and also contains vitamin A, calcium and iron. The stems are very soft and you can eat the entire vegetable!
It takes less than 15 minutes to prepare from start to finish and I can usually cook it while I prepare the main dish. It’s fast to cook, delicious and healthy! Hope this will become one of the popular side dishes for you and your family as well.
Japanese Ingredient Substitution: If you want to look for substitutes for Japanese condiments and ingredients, click here.
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- ½ lb broccolini (220 g)
- pinch kosher/sea salt (I use Diamond Crystal; Use half for table salt)
- 3 Tbsp toasted white sesame seeds
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp sugar
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Gather all the ingredients.
- Rinse the broccolini in running water, cut and discard the ends.
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil. When boiling, add a pinch of salt and put the end of broccolini first into the boiling water and then submerge the rest of broccolini. Boil for 2 minutes.
- Remove the broccolini and soak in the iced water to cool.
- Pick up a few bunches of broccolini and squeeze the water out. Place them in a clean bowl.
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Add the sesame seeds in a large frying pan and toast them until a few sesame seeds start popping, about 1.5 minutes. Toss the frying pan while toasting so sesame seeds won’t get burnt.
- Transfer the toasted sesame seeds into a Japanese-style pestle & grooved mortar and keep grinding until the texture becomes smooth.
- Add sugar and soy sauce to crushed sesame seed and mix well.
- Mix the sesame sauce with the broccolini and serve at the room temperature or chilled.
Recipe by Namiko Chen of Just One Cookbook. All images and content on this site are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without my permission. If you’d like to share this recipe on your site, please re-write the recipe and link to this post as the original source. Thank you.
I’ve made this before with regular broccoli–broccolini looks so cute!
I’m glad you and your family had a safe return to SF, too!
Hi Donna! We like broccoli too! Thank you so much for your kind words!!
It has certainly been a while since I’ve had broccolini… Seems like a good time to revisit the veggie. Thanks for sharing the recipe, and I’m so glad that you and your family have returned safely to the states. I can’t wait to see your newest inspirations through your future posts!
Thank you Kimmi! The first week is always tough missing family and our life in Japan but next week should be better! I think I had broccolini most this year because of this gomaae dish. =P
Hi! I’ve made your spinach gomaae before and thought it was super tasty! I would like to make a batch of the dressing and store it for later use, is that possible?
Kind regards,
Rebecca 🙂
Hi Rebecca! I’m so happy to hear you like the gomaae sauce! The dressing should last 4-5 days in the fridge as long as you don’t mix with other ingredients. 🙂
Really really yummy. Mechya mechya yummy.
Haha Arigato for your kind feedback, Judy! 🙂
Is there a reason you boil the broccolini and squeeze out the water rather than steaming? I have seen this step often and always wondered.
Hi MPaula! Sure! You can definitely steam it if you like. In my experience, you can keep the green really nice and fresh color when you blanch it in salt water (salt is important in blanching veggies – it brings/keeps the color of vegetables). Hence, we tend to blanch. Hope this helps! 🙂