Thinly sliced pork or beef is the key ingredient in many popular Japanese recipes. Here‘s my technique for how to slice meat thinly at home for delicious Japanese dishes like sukiyaki, okonomiyaki, and gyudon.
Prep Time10 minutesmins
Freezing Time1 hourhr30 minutesmins
Total Time1 hourhr40 minutesmins
Course: How to
Cuisine: Japanese
Keyword: thinly sliced meat
Ingredients
premium-quality meat(beef or pork tenderloin, top sirloin, strip loin, rib eye, pork loin, or any cut of meat that is slightly more lean and a bit more firm; my pieces here are 1 lb each)
Instructions
Put the premium-quality meat in a single layer in a large freezer bag.
Remove the air from bag and close tightly.
Put on a metal tray (so the heat transfers faster) and freeze the meat for 1½ to 2 hours, depending on the size of the piece of meat and how fatty it is.
To Slice the Meat
Take out the meat from the freezer. Each piece shown here is 1 pound and I froze them for 1½ hours.
The meat is ready if the knife goes through smoothly and just firm enough for you to slice thinly. If you have trouble slicing because the meat is still too soft, put it back into the freezer until it‘s firmer.
Slice against the grain using a gentle sawing motion. When you look at the meat, you will see the fibers of the meat are going in one direction. You need to cut across this grain in the other direction to ensure tenderness.
Here is the thinly-sliced meat, ready to use in your recipe.
To Store
You can wrap the meat in plastic wrap, put in a freezer bag, and store in the freezer for future use.
Notes
Equipment you will need:
A very sharp knife (A dull knife will not slice nicely)
A metal tray
A large freezer bag
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 in your own words and link to this post as the original source. Thank you.