Baby food, How to make Japanese baby food

How to make shirasu (whitebait) & tofu dish for your baby – Japanese baby food cooking show

Part 3 of our new Japanese baby food cooking show!

Tomoko & her baby Taiga show us how to cook shirasu (whitebait) and tofu dish flavoured with Japanese dash soup. This recipe can be made with just hot water and a microwave – perfect for summer as you won’t need to cook over a hot stove! This is a wonderful dish full of protein and calcium for our growing babies, and is super simple to make in just 5 easy steps. It can even be done one-handed as you hold your baby, just like Tomoko does in the video!! Thank you Tomoko & Taiga!

What you need:

  • Shirasu (whitebait), boiled (not dried)
  • Tofu, silky soft
  • Katsuo-bushi (dried bonito flakes)
  • Hot water
  • 2 x small bowls
  • Suribachi bowl and Surikogi stick for grinding
  • Tea strainer
  • Spoon
  • Microwave
How to make:
  1. Place tea strainer on top of small bowl. Add spoonful of shirasu into strainer, and pour hot water over the top from the kettle. Soak for 1-2 minutes. After soaking, strain whitebait and move to the Suribachi bowl for grinding later.
  2. Similar to step 1, place one sachet of katsuo-bushi in the tea strainer sitting over the small bowl, and pour hot water over the top. Soak for 1 minute. The resulting soup from the katsuo-bushi is called ‘dashi’.
  3. Place spoonful tofu into small bowl, add 3 tablespoons of dashi from (2).
  4. Place lid on bowl from (3), and cook in microwave for 1.5 minutes.
  5. Grind shirasu in the Suribachi bowl. Add the tofu/dashi mix and mash together with the shirasu.
Note – This recipe makes enough for 1-2 meals. Grind to finer puree for 5-6 month old babies. You can also cook a larger volume and puree with a hand-held blender, and refrigerate (or freeze) for later.
Japanese terms to look for at the supermarket:
  • Shirasu(しらす)
  • Silky soft tofu – called “Kinu” tofu(絹、きぬ)- don’t get the hard tofu(木綿、もめん)
  • Katsuo-bushi(かつおぶし)
  • Bowl and stick for grinding is called Suribachi (すりばち)and Surikogi(すりこぎ). Suribachi is the bowl. Bachi (hachi) means bowl in Japanese. Suru (or suri) means grinding.

Happy Cooking Everyone!

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8 thoughts on “How to make shirasu (whitebait) & tofu dish for your baby – Japanese baby food cooking show

  1. Grace says:

    please please please, post more videos about how to make baby food.. I am a new foreigner mom in japan and this kind of videos help me a lot ! Thank you !

    1. Kate says:

      Hi Grace, Thanks for your message! We’ll try and make more cooking videos soon! 🙂 Kate

  2. Dora says:

    Your site has been very helpful to me a first time mum in Japan. I was just wondering how much water did Tomoko add to the packet katsuo-bushi? Looking forward to more videos (helpful when you can’t read Japanese cookbooks).

    1. Kate says:

      Hi Dora! Thank you for your message. Tomoko will get back to you with the details of the recipe:)!

    2. Tomoko says:

      Hi Dora!

      Thank you for your comment, and sorry for taking time to get back to you.
      I put about 150ml hot water for this time.
      660 ml hot water per 12g katsuo-bushi is recommended in my book. Katsuo-bushi pack I used in the video is about 3g/package, so that about 150ml is good enough to make Dashi soup.
      Enjoy cooking!

      Tomoko

  3. randi jayasekara says:

    please, post more videos about how to make baby food.. I am a new foreigner mom in japan and this kind of videos help me a lot ! Thank you !

  4. Maru Kobayashi says:

    Thank you for the video and recipes! About how old are babies that are eating this recipe?

    1. Kate says:

      HI Maru! Our babies were 8 months old when we took this video 🙂

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