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Cooked with ginger, fried tofu skin, and soy sauce-based sauce, this Japanese Ginger Rice is so fragrant that you would enjoy it on its own.
Have you seen young ginger (新生姜) in recipes before and wonder what it is? Compared to “regular” ginger, young ginger has thin skin and some parts may be a little bit pinkish. As young ginger is juicier and has a mild taste, it is often used in pickled ginger/sushi ginger (Gari ガリ in Japanese) or in this delicious Ginger Rice.
Watch How to Make Ginger Rice 生姜の炊き込みご飯の作り方
Fragrant Japanese rice cooked with ginger, fried tofu skin, and flavorful soy sauce-based sauce.
What is Young Ginger?
Young ginger is in season during the summertime, usually between June and August in Japan. Young ginger and regular ginger that you normally see in the grocery store are actually the same. When you leave the young ginger under certain conditions for about 2 months, it turns into regular ginger.
During this 2 month period, the pink color turns into the golden color and the skin gets hardened as it matures. The ginger can actually last close to 1 year if you can control the moisture and temperature.
The Usasage of Ginger in Recipes
Ginger adds a nice aroma, zest, and spicy kick to Asian cuisines. It tastes great with food, but it’s also very good for you and your body. Not only does ginger’s unique powers keeps you warm, but it’s also an appetite stimulant and digestive aid. There are also other health benefits, and if you’re interested, continue reading here.
Young ginger can be found in Asian grocery stores during the summertime. If it’s out of season or you cannot find any, you can substitute with regular ginger, as I did for this recipe. If you’re not a big fan of ginger, reduce the amount of ginger by 1/3 or half, especially if you’re not using young ginger. I use the same amount of ginger as young ginger and my family enjoyed it.
What dish to go with Ginger Rice
We recently ate Ginger Rice and Miso Salmon together and it was fantastic.
Japanese Ingredient Substitution: If you want to look for substitutes for Japanese condiments and ingredients, click here.
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- 1½ cups uncooked Japanese short-grain rice (335 g or 12 oz)
- 1 piece aburaage (deep-fried tofu pouch)
- 1 oz ginger (30 g) (preferably young ginger)
- 1¼ cups water
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Gather all the ingredients.
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- Boil water in a small saucepan and pour on top of aburaage. This will remove the oil coated on the aburaage (manufacture’s oil doesn’t taste good, so this extra step will improve flavor of aburaage).
- Cut in half lengthwise and slice thinly into strips.
- Peel the ginger and cut it into julienned pieces.
- Mix all the ingredients for the seasonings in a 2 cup measuring cup. Then add water to the seasonings so that the liquid totals 1 ½ cup (equal volume as rice).
- Place the (drained) rice into the rice cooker. Pour the liquid into the rice cooker and mix well, and add ginger and aburaage on top.
- Start cooking. If you have a “Mixed Rice” option, use it (See Notes below). When the rice is done, let it steam for another 10 minutes. Fluffy it up with the rice paddle and serve.
Aburaage: This is really good to have in this recipe to give more flavors. You can find it in Japanese grocery stores. However, if you cannot find it, you can omit it.
Regular or Mixed Rice setting on rice cooker: The main difference is that Mixed Rice setting will create burnt rice called “Okoge” on the bottom of the rice cooker. Takikomi Gohan (mixed rice) always have the burnt rice from soy sauce in the seasoning, and many people enjoy the burnt charred rice. If your rice cooker doesn’t have the mixed rice option, steam extra 5 min longer at the end before opening the rice cooker.
Equipment you will need:
- Rice cooker (If you don’t own a rice cooker, you can cook rice over the stove top. Watch the video here and get the recipe here. Cooking time will be just 15 minutes.)
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.
Dear Nami,
this young ginger you are talking about looks suspiciously similar to galangal, the thai ginger. Is it the same? Galangal also taltes much milder than the regular ginger… thanks for your answer!
Hi Alina! I checked online and it seems like they are slightly different:
http://www.thekitchn.com/ingredient-spotlight-what-is-g-43841
Nowhere mentioned online that you can substitute each other, so I don’t think we can use alternatively.
Hope this helps! 🙂
Thank you! you are right… it’s not the same….
Can I make homemade Aburaage? Or I can skip it?
Hi Minh! Aburaage has some good savory flavors so I like adding to mine, but you can definitely skip, if you can’t get it easily. 🙂
Hi, may I know if we can still bite into the ginger pieces after the rice is cooked? One of my boys don’t eat ginger. Thanks!
Hi Teo! If he doesn’t like ginger, maybe you can grind the ginger instead of chopping and reduce the amount? The fragrance and taste of ginger is there after cooked, so I’m not sure if he would enjoy.
Confession: This recipe is really enjoyable with inariage instead of aburaage.
It’s a lot sweeter of course. This happened by mistake. I didn’t know the difference between the two for a while. I made several recipes the wrong way before I discovered this… I’m not complaining! 😀
Hi Lion! Ha ha ha. I hear you….. my favorite udon noodles have been always kitsune udon because I love inariage so much (I use it for my cold udon noodles too, and this is a must). Store-bought ones are a bit too sweet, but it’s guilty pleasure for me (but I must say homemade inari is very good, not just syrupy sweetness). 🙂
How would you modify this recipe if using Brown (Genmai) Rice?
Hi Janet! I haven’t used brown rice with this recipe – but if you have a recipe for making good brown rice, you can definitely use it. At step, instead of 1 1/2 cup (this is for white rice), it should be the water amount from the recipe you’re using. I’ll try to share genmai recipe one day – I’ll need to work on it a little bit. 🙂
Hi! I really want to try doing this for my family. Just wondering, is there substitute for sake? We don’t drink it and it’d be a waste to only use 1tbsp for this.
Hi Yvonne! If you have Chinese rice wine or dry sherry, you can use it – they are the best substitute. If not… you can use same amount of water (don’t skip since it relies on the diluting the soy sauce). Sake adds umami and sweetness from fermented rice so it won’t be same as water though. 🙂
Thank you so much! I have Chinese rice wine. Can’t wait.
Hope you enjoy the recipe! ox
To me, I think aburaage is a must. It really boosts the flavor of ginger rice. I cooked rice without aburaage since I couldn’t find it at the Local oriental market. But I just found out about another Japanese grocery store near my old house from Nami’s list, and now my rice is super delicious as much as I can eat it by itself 🙂
Hi Thuyen! I’m glad to hear you could try this recipe with Aburaage. I agree, the oil gives nice savory flavor to the rice. I’m also happy to know that my Japanese Grocery Store Around the World list helped you find a store! Yay! Thank you for your kind feedback!
Can you put everything in the rice cooker early and let it sit there for a couple hours before cooking it?
Hi Amy! Yes you can. 🙂
Very tasty rice dish. Couldn’t get my hands on any young ginger for last night – might just be out of season at this point. But I remember seeing it in the H-Mart over the summer, so I hope to try that in the future.
Question on the abura-age… I can only find those at the far-off, dedicated Japanese market. Nearer Asian markets only carry inari-age. But the nearer markets do carry fried tofu puffs in the fridge case. I figured those would be closer to the double-deep-fried abura-age than single-fried pouches (which are more dense) or the sweeter inari-age. I cut up the puffs into strips and that seemed to turn out well, but I never tasted the abura-age the one time I had them before cooking them into inari-age. Any thoughts on how puffs might differ from real abura-age?
Hi Todd! Thank you so much for trying this recipe and I’m so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for letting me know that H-Mart sells young ginger when it’s in season.
Regarding the aburaage. I think, those crispy (deep fried) tofu cubes at Chinese grocery stores sell are similar but since the deep fried surface is more, maybe you can reduce the amount? Aburaage is much softer and tender while crispy tofus are more crisp texture. So cut smaller and should be ok. 🙂 Some JOC reader told me he LOVES adding Inari Age in this recipe (I think he left comments here and FB page). Hope that helps!
My friends and I usually dislike eating plain rice in a dish, so I used this rice recipe for a chicken katsudon, and we completely finished our bowls. Terrific zest and subtle flavors make for a much more interesting rice bowl.
Question: how might this dish work using pickled red ginger?
Hi Chris! I’m so happy to hear you liked the ginger taste in the rice! As for the pickled red ginger… do you mean the shredded one, or the thinly sliced one? Both taste slightly different, and I recommend to use a small amount (and drain the vinegar liquid well) and it should work fine. 🙂
Beni shoga, I believe, as opposed to sushi ginger. As strange as it might sound, the prospect of a pink ginger rice just sounds neat and visually interesting.
Some people mix that in Inari Sushi filling (rice + beni shoga), too. Yeah it will be pinkish rice with red dots. 😀
Hi Nami,
Do you use the mixed rice program on your rice cooker when making this?
We’re going to try it with the miso salmon tonight using some fresh NZ salmon we picked up today (Summer time down here). We usually have the salmon with a wafu soba salad with edamame but thought we would try the ginger rice instead this time.
Hi Alastair! I use a Mixed Rice setting because it will cook for a longer time and burn the rice on the bottom (called “Okoge”). It’s something we look for when we make mixed rice. If you use a regular setting, cook for 5 minutes longer.
Hope you enjoy the meal! 🙂
It was delicious, a nice change to the wafu dressed soba we usually have with it.
I saw in the video you had used the mixed rice setting so tired the same and we enjoyed the Okoge as well 🙂
https://photos.app.goo.gl/cDga1xTxTDkMWmdm8
Thank you for sharing the picture. Wow, how beautiful!!! I’m so happy to hear you enjoyed the recipe!
Can I use instant pot?
Hi Kenya! Yes you can. Follow this recipe: https://www.justonecookbook.com/instant-pot-rice/
Hi Nami! You’re my go to for Japanese recipes! Have you tried making this in the instant pot? I need to make a bigger portion so I wanted to try it in the instant pot. I’m wondering if I need to change the liquid to rice ratio.
Hi Shelly! Thank you so much for your kind words! Not this particular recipe, but you can make rice in the IP.
https://www.justonecookbook.com/instant-pot-rice/
Rice is tricky… I have to review some Japanese rice before, and even though they are all short-grain rice, the amount of water necessary for each brand of rice to make the same texture rice is so different. You probably need to do a test run to figure out the amount of water, but I have the suggested amount for Instant Pot Rice (link above). Hope that’s a good start… 🙂
I made this tonight for dinner to go with the miso butter salmon. Yummm..!! But FYI the 1.5 cups uncooked rice was measured using a rice cup, whereas the water and seasonings were measured using 1.5 measuring cups. And I used Jasmine rice. And it turned out very well. Nami, would I need to only double all ingredients if I want to cook double the amount of rice?
Hi Juliana! For this recipe, I used 1.5 cups using a regular measurement cup. When I use a rice cooker cup, I usually specify in the recipe saying “rice cooker cup” (not sure if that’s the right word… but I use it). And yes, I would double the ingredients.
Thanks. I’ll double the recipe next time so there is leftover to pack for lunch the next day! 😀
Hi Juliana! Yes, you can freeze it too! 🙂
Hi Nami, you said in this article “ The ginger can actually last close to 1 year if you can control the moisture and temperature.” My ginger shrivels up in a couple of weeks. What’s the best way to make it last longer?
Hi Jane! That’s what I heard. I usually use up everything before I save for that long (Keeping young ginger is easier, at least 1+ month for me). My method is to wrap the ginger with damp paper towel and put it in an airtight container. I change the paper towel once in a while. I also cut or mince or grate and wrap in plastic and then freeze too.
Nami, this looks delicious! Would I be able to cook it in the instant pot using your method for making plain Japanese rice, or would it burn on the bottom? As I recall, the last time I tried making instant pot takikomigohan it gave me the “burn” message and stopped cooking. I threw out my rice cooker since the instant pot’s stainless steel makes me less worried than the non-stick coating the rice cooker had (and I can’t find any without non-stick coating!).
Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated on how to tweak this for IP. Thank you!
Hi Elizabeth! I haven’t tried cooking this recipe in the IP so I can’t say for sure, but it should work. Make sure to rinse the rice well (so no excess starch build up on the bottom). Don’t mix the ingredients and they should be on top when you are cooking. 🙂
How can I modify this with no tofu and just cooking on stove top?
Hi Sara,
If you can’t find Aburaage (deep-fried tofu pouch), you can omit it or add a little bit of oil.
One of JOC readers uses Inari Age (the tofu pouch for Inari Sushi) for this recipe and he said it’s really good, too!
As for the stovetop instruction, Please see the “RECIPE NOTES” at the end of this recipe and check https://www.justonecookbook.com/how-to-cook-rice/
I hope this is helpful.