Cooked with ginger, fried tofu skin, and soy sauce base sauce, this Japanese Ginger Rice is so fragrant that you would enjoy it on its own.
Have you seen an ingredient called young ginger (新生姜) in recipes before and wonder what it is? Young ginger is in season during the summer time, usually between June and August in Japan.
Compared to “regular” ginger, young ginger has thin skin and some parts may be a little bit pinkish. As young ginger is more juicy 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 base sauce.
Young ginger and 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 and the skin gets hardened as it matures. Ginger can actually lasts close to 1 year if you can control the moisture and temperature.
Ginger adds 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, 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, but 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.
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- 1½ cups uncooked Japanese short grain rice (1½ cups = 335 g or 12 oz)
- 1 piece aburaage (deep fried tofu pouch)
- 1 oz ginger (1 oz = 30 g) (preferably young ginger)
- 1¼ cups water
Gather all the ingredients.
- 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.
Yum! This sounds incredible.
What an impressive dish, love your video!!!
I enjoy ginger in various recipe but have never run across actual young ginger for purchase so I’m glad that regular ginger would work in this tasty sounding dish.
This flavored rice sounds delish! I love the addition of aburage for texture. Hope to try it with brown rice or quinoa!
So glad that you and your family were spared from the recent earthquake, too!
Hi Donna! I believe aburaage is really important in Takikomi gohan, giving enough oil to make the rice more flavorful (I should mention that in my Note section!). Oh yes, let me know how it goes with brown rice or qunioa!
Thank you for your kind words. xo
I’d never heard of young ginger, so thank you for explaining. We just purchased aburaage to make inari sushi, so we have everything for your ginger rice recipe. It looks so delicious!
Hi Nami,
Ginger rice or ginger fried rice is quite common to us especially those woman on confinement period. We consume most food cooked with ginger during this time. I never get tired of ginger fried rice as they are so fragrant.
I have grown to really adore ginger. Ginger rice is something our parents make for us after we have a baby (in Chinese culture)…I mean, we cook/eat ginger all the time but ginger rice is especially “prized” for its benefits after having a child, I suppose. I really enjoyed my ginger rice back after I had my son. I never thought to make something like it! And I learned so much about young ginger today. Thanks for the lesson, Nami! : )
I bet the flavor of this rice is unbelievable. I love the idea of ginger in rice!
That’s it! I need to move to Japan! I want and need to learn all of this amazing-ness! And I definitely love to health benefits! Thank you for this recipe!
Haha! Japan has lots of great food…. 🙂 Thank you for the kind comment, Elaine!
This looks really good! My parents, especially my dad, likes to chew on young ginger that’s used for garnishing. I’m partial towards the Japanese pickled kind too. A very mild warmth. I think the Chinese make ginger rice for postpartum recovery during the confinement period. I can imagine how fragrant this is with a drizzle of sesame oil. Yum!
Oh how fragrant this ginger rice must be. And the flavor is perfect for any meal. I can even serve this for breakfast. I was thinking of you and your family. Good to hear you are safe and ok after the earthquake. Thanks for sharing this great recipe, Nami.
I have never heard of young ginger before, but I am sure this rice is very aromatic!
I’ve been use cooking garlic rice but never been tried ginger rice. I’ll try this recipe of yours. It looks good. Thanks.
The young root ginger looks smashing. I have never seen such tender spring ginger before. And what a wonderful delicious flavor it must have lent to the rice. Fabulous Nami!
wow! I’m impressed! It must be delicious! Beautiful photos!
That rice looks good and definitely goes well with that Salmon!
Wonderfully fragrant!
Cheers,
Rosa
It looks almost like a flower. Beautiful!
I am a big fan of ginger and loved that you shared some fun facts about young ginger. This looks amazing! I can just imagine how the incredible aroma as you were making it – love all the fantastic flavors in here and I am definitely craving for a big bowl of rice after reading this. Thanks so much for sharing this and I can’t wait to see the Miso Salmon recipe – Pinning 🙂
I love your wonderful ginger rice, the flavour must be strong and delicious 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
I first heard of young ginger a few years ago and I recently was able to buy some. It was very expensive! I used it to make a broth for a rice dish. It was wonderful but sadly, I haven’t seen young ginger since – it’s very hard to source xx
This rice must be really flavorful 🙂
Interesting, I never saw a young ginger before, here we only have the regular one, which we call “kion”, and I like to use it in my rice, gives a great taste.
I never knew there was such a thing as young ginger! But it makes total sense. I love ginger whether it’s old or young — such a terrific flavor. This looks wonderful — thanks.
what a simple and easy way to infuse flavor into classic white rice. I love it. It would be so nice with a pork tenderloin at dinner
Wow, Nami! Another great technique. Incorporating young ginger in rice makes a healthy twist to the usual plain or garlic rice. Thank you!
Julie
Gourmet Getaways
I love rice but do not remember having rice with ginger…sounds delicious Nami…thanks for the recipe!
Have a wonderful week 😀
So interesting about “young ginger” I love how ginger smells and enjoy using it when I can. This rice must smell and taste ginger-amazing…got me wanting some right now!
I know I have ogled your miso salmon before, but now I MUST make your wonderful ginger rice when I finally make it for my family! I love jazzing up rice for company…and adding ginger is such a terrific idea!
The ginger rice sounds lovely, especially with the miso salmon – looking forward to the recipe!
Wonderful change from an everyday white rice! I am a ginger addict (it’s as obligatory as garlic or onions in my pantry), so I will certainly try your recipe soon.
I sometimes manage to buy some young ginger and then I always pickle it (gari). It does taste much much better than the old ginger…
通常通り、美味しいそうです。又は、通常通り勉強になりました。ピンクと金の生姜の区別の理由が今までわかりませんでした。味と健康は生姜の得点ですね。
My copain is a huge fan of ginger including young ginger. What a gorgeous bowl of ginger rice. Rice is hard to photograph due to the color and your photos of the rice turned out beautiful! Your video is amazing, Nami, you and your hubb are awesome!
I love easy Asian recipes that I can make too:) This is easy and will definitely try. I love to use ginger in many dishes, with chicken, pasta.. now I will try it with rice too.
Nice meals Nami
i think this gingery rice just perfect through my rainy days lately….
I bet this rice smelled delightful and was full of great flavor. You can even make rice a meal to remember. 🙂
I bought ginger a couple of weeks ago and haven’t used it yet. So many choices, but I think I will like this rice.
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.
Hi Nami, this looks really interesting! I want to try it out with your miso salmon. I love ginger flavors, but my boyfriend and I aren’t big fans of chewing on ginger pieces ( and we don’t have young ginger here, unfortunately) – do you think it would be possible to finely chop or even grate the ginger instead of just slicing thinly?
Hi Aubrey! Sure! Depends on how much ginger flavor you want in the rice, you can slice it and put in the rice, and take out after cooking (so you don’t bite into it), or finely chop or grate it. If it’s juicy ginger, you can just use the ginger juice only too. 🙂 Hope you enjoy! xo
Thank you Nami! I’ll try it out soon! 😀
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!