Sugar 砂糖
The use of a variety of unique sugars by Japan’s cooks as an essential seasoning in all kinds of savory dishes is one of their key ways of making foods better tasting and more satisfying, and, perhaps surprisingly, it also leads to healthier eating.
Any cook that’s followed a Japanese recipe is aware that sugar is a fundamental ingredient in all kinds of savory dishes. Sushi rice, tare dipping sauces, many kinds of tsukemono pickles, tamago-yaki egg omelets and chawan-mushi savory egg custards, ganmodoki tofu dumplings and steamed kamaboko fish pastes, noodle soups, dressed and chilled vegetable dishes and most nimono simmered dishes, as well as many other kinds of stewed and braised dishes, and, of course, Japan’s well-known teriyaki-glazed fish, chicken, and meats, typically contain anywhere from a pinch to a teaspoon, tablespoon, or more of sugar. That’s not because Japan’s eaters like their food sweet. It’s because Japan’s cooks know that sugar is the most powerful seasoning in the pantry, helping to make foods better tasting, more filling, more savory, harmoniously balanced, beautiful, and, above all, satisfying.
Japan has a long history of using sugar in cooking. Sugarcane is a type of grass that originated in the tropical regions of Southeast Asia, and has been grown on Japan’s southern-most islands of Okinawa, Kyushu, and Shikoku for millennium. Cane sugars have been made in the country for nearly as long. It’s a straight-forward process. After sugarcane is harvested in late fall, it is crushed to extract the juice, which is then boiled and concentrated until sugar crystalizes. This produces a raw, very dark, rich-tasting sugar that is called koku-to in Japan and still produced on the Okinawan Islands.
Over the centuries, a range of other uniquely aromatic, colored, textured, flavored, and nutritious sugars have been developed to meet the needs of Japan’s seafood- and vegetable-based diet and quick cooking methods and to maximize the flavor and functionality of sugar as a seasoning. Japan’s cooks, in turn, know the importance of sugar as a food itself, its sweetness as a fundamental taste of nature, and its physical properties as building blocks to tastier and more attractive dishes. They have learned how to skillfully season savory dishes with sugar not only to make them more delicious, but also as a way to cook with less salt, fats, and oils and to use sugar in various dishes of a meal to appease the appetite so that one eats less.
Sugar is the Seasoning of Life
All foods naturally contain some sugar. Not just starchy foods like rice, potatoes, and grains and fruits, but also meats and vegetables. Sugar provides the fuel that living things need to function, including humans. Foods’ sugar content is a key reason we crave and eat foods. Adding some sugar during cooking fortifies a dish with energy. This is an important, practical role in a vegetable-forward cuisine like Japan’s due to the limited consumption of meats and minimal use of fats and oils in cooking—the other main sources of energy in a diet.
Sugar being the life-blood of all living things means that the flavor of food is highly influenced by sugar. A bit of sugar added when cooking seasons foods, working to expand and complement foods’ flavors and make them more delicious, but not necessarily sweet. One of the highest compliments that can be paid to a food or dish in Japan is that it’s “amai.” Amai literally means sweet. But when used like this, it doesn’t mean sweet as one usually understands that word; it means that the food is fully flavored. Vegetables, in particular, depend on their sugar content to taste their best, and they become more aromatic and fully-flavored with additions of sugar. The most consistent use of sugar in Japanese recipes is for vegetable-based dishes.
Salt is the other key flavor enhancer of foods, but its role is different. It intensifies foods’ flavors. If you rely only on salt to improve flavor, you’re likely to use a lot of salt, but even then you won’t achieve the full, rounded taste sensation that sugar provides. Your dish will taste harsh and imbalanced. By using some sugar to season dishes, you will, instead, be able to use less salt overall when cooking. The two seasonings need to be used in tandem. In Japan, cooking and flavor is all about balance.
Sugar is also important as a seasoning in the Japanese kitchen because sweetness is one of the five primary tastes of nature along with saltiness, sourness, bitterness, and umami. These tastes and the quartet of seasonings used to manage and manipulate them—sugar, salt, acid, and umami-rich seasonings—are the guides and instruments by which Japan’s cooks balance and harmonize the flavor of all dishes. For example, notes of sweetness help to balance and mask acidity and bitterness. Vegetables contain more bitterness than most other foods, which sugar and salt used together can offset, with sugar masking bitterness and salt suppressing it. Sweet notes are especially helpful because they are long, deep notes versus the shorter, shallower notes of salt and acid. Sugar extends foods’ flavors, mixes and carries the flavors of the other ingredients in dish, and has a sustained impact as a seasoning.
In addition, sugar’s taste sensation of fullness has a close relationship to umami, which is often described as savory deliciousness. Furthermore, sugar can create umami when it’s heated and caramelized. Even richer, deeper, more complex umami is created when sugar is heated together with the savory amino acids found in the proteins of meats. This makes sugar a very useful building block in creating umami in a dish. It means that less fats and oils are needed to build umami. And, by helping to build umami in this way, it also means that less overall sugar, as well as salt, is needed to make dishes delicious.
Sugar has special cooking functions, more so than salt and acid. Like salt and acid, sugar tenderizes foods, masks odors in addition to enhancing aromas, preserves the colors of food, and can either help foods retain moisture or draw out moisture. In addition, sugar, like salt and acid, has anti-bacterial properties, which help to ensure the quality of foods during cooking and when used as a preservative in jams and pickles and in fermented foods. In other words, sugar can carry its own weight, so to speak, alongside salt and acid when multiple cooking functions are needed of a seasoning.
Moreover, being a food itself, sugar has structure, and when used in cooking it adds body, creaminess, and mouthfeel as well as attractive lusters and beautiful glazes to dishes. Dishes become more interesting and appealing. There is minimal or no need for fats and oils to achieve these effects.
Not a lot of sugar is needed to season savory dishes. Possibly none at all, if your ingredients are at their peak flavor. But by staggering additions of sugar in some of the dishes of a meal, one will likely eat less food overall, which is another characteristic, and also virtue, of the Japanese diet. A sense of fullness and satisfaction will have been achieved over the course of the meal; most likely earlier on than when eating Western meals, which, as one Japanese food maker put it, rely on a big bang of sugar in the form of a dessert at the end to sate the appetite and shut down the stomach, by which time the damage of over-eating may have been done.
Types of Japanese Sugars
Japanese cuisine is often called a “chomiryo” food culture. “Chomiyro” means seasoning, and the expression means a “way of seasoning.” Fresh, high quality ingredients are cooked simply and quickly with the four essential seasonings of sugar, salt, acid, and umami doing much of the work of making foods delicious. The seasonings, in turn, are made the best they can be in terms of quality and to maximize their role and contributions in cooking. This includes having their own distinctive, yet subtle, tastes to provide interesting additions of taste and accents of flavor in lieu of herbs and spices, which are used sparsely in Japanese cooking, typically added at the end of cooking as more of a condiment. It also includes infusing the seasonings with umami to compensate for Japanese cuisine’s limited use of meats, fats, and oils. And last, it includes boosting the seasonings with vitamins and minerals when possible to make them more nutritious. Japan’s pantry of sugars reflects these considerations and are used inter-changeably depending on the ingredients and characteristics of the dish, the taste of the region’s cuisine, and one’s personal preference and style of cooking.
Soft Sugars
The sugars used in savory Japanese cooking are “soft” sugars; sugars that are moist and/or have very fine crystals so that they dissolve, blend, and mix quickly in cooking. This makes them very useful for uncooked preparations like dipping sauces, marinades, salad dressings, and quick pickles and such short cooking techniques as searing, stir-frying, and a simmer of little more than ten minutes on average. Being moist, they also help the ingredients retain their own moisture and preserve the delicate textures of seafoods and vegetables. Soft sugars also function well in beverages and in traditional types of Japanese confectionary like mochi rice cakes.
Johaku-To (上白糖)
Johaku-to means “Top Quality White Sugar.” It is a highly refined, moist, pure white sugar with crystals smaller than Western dry granulated sugar and slightly larger than caster sugar. Created during the Meiji era (1868-1912), it is Japan’s all-purpose sugar, accounting for over 50% of the various types of sugar used in cooking. When a Japanese recipe calls for sugar, it is referring to johaku-to (or its variation sanon-to, discussed below) whether it is a savory or sweet dish. Johaku-to includes invert sugar, a syrup that is high in fructose sugar, which enhances the aroma of the sugar, strengthens its ability to help foods retain their moisture and texture, does not clump and crystalize easily, even when using high heat, and gives the sugar a bright, fruity, and sweeter taste than other sugars. Johaku-to’s sweet taste is the reason Japanese dishes sometimes taste sweet, not because they have too much sugar. In fact, johaku-to has slightly less calories than standard, refined, dry white sugars.
Johaku-to is especially useful in clear soups, sushi rice, fish cakes, tofu dishes, white sauces, and other preparations when color is a consideration; also when cooking the freshest ingredients, using the fastest cooking methods, and keeping dishes light in terms of seasonings and umami to match that of the ingredients. Johaku-to isn’t accented with any umami flavor. Its bright, fruity sweetness makes it a good accompanist to sea salts, citrus juice or wine vinegars as the acidic seasonings, and spices. It is excellent in all kinds of confectionary, jam and marmalade making, and beverages. It caramelizes easily, creates a smooth meringue, and keeps baked goods moist and tender.
Sanon-To (三温糖)
Sanon-to is a variation of johaku-to. It is a highly refined, moist, fine-grain, pure sugar that contains invert sugar. The difference is that it’s been heated at three different temperatures (san-on) to lightly caramelize it. This gives sanon-to a light brown color, mild caramel flavor with buttery overtones, and a gentler taste of sweetness. It’s not to be confused with Western brown sugars, which include molasses. Sanon-to has no molasses and, like johaku-to, no added vitamins or minerals.
Some cooks use sanon-to for everything because they like its soft taste and value its mild umami and ability to add some creamy mouthfeel to a sauce. They don’t mind if it colors a dish. However, sanon-to is designed for richer foods and dishes, particularly meaty ones, and for use alongside Japan’s umami-rich pantry of seasonings—soy sauce, rice vinegar, and miso. Its mild taste means that dishes won’t taste sweet even when using high concentrations. Sanon-to is an excellent baking sugar.
Wasanbon-To (和三盆糖)
Wasanbon-to is the most quintessentially Japanese sugar. It is a pale, cream colored sugar that has an ethereal aroma and elegant floral flavor with grassy and honey overtones, and a refreshing sweetness. It is a dry sugar but has a powdery texture that melts in the mouth and provides a long lingering taste sensation. In other words, it’s a perfect seasoning sugar. A traditional, hand-crafted, artisanal sugar, wasanbon-to was first created in the middle of the Edo period (1608-1868). It is made from a unique species of sugarcane called “Chiku-To” or “Hoso-Kiki,” which is thin and short and often harvested by hand because of its delicacy. The eight-stage process of making wasanbon-to takes place over a 20-day period and includes boiling down the sugarcane juice several times, cooling it in kioke wooden tubs and unglazed pots to slowly and gently crystalize the sugar, then pressing the crystalized mass of sugar with stones and also kneading it by hand up to five times to remove residual molasses and impurities. The final product is the essence of the sugarcane plant, the mellow, sweet flavor and vitamins of a grass.
Historically, wasanbon-to was reserved for Japan’s aristocracy and samurai class. But even among them, it has been replaced by johaku-to and sanon-to since World War II. Nowadays, it’s made only in Kagawa and Tokushima prefectures on Shikoku Island and, because of its relatively high price, is mainly used to make traditional Japanese sweets and by professional chefs in the better Japanese restaurants, who use it in their sushi rice, tamago-yaki omelets, tsuyu dipping sauces, and noodle broths, among other dishes. But it’s not so high-priced that it shouldn’t be considered for use in all-around cooking when you take into consideration its high quality, unique flavor, and the generally small amounts of sugar needed to season a savory dish. It is especially good for any style of lightly seasoned, fresh ingredient cooking that would benefit from its gentle, refreshing taste and umami glow. In recent years, wasanbon-to has undergone a revival, and is being used for its unique flavor in Western-style desserts and confections—puddings, ice cream, and cookies, scones, and cakes—and also as a confectionary sugar dusted on top of fresh fruit and desserts. It is also enjoyed in tea and coffee.
Kibi-Zato (きび砂糖)
Kibi-zato (sometimes called sato-kibi) simply means “cane sugar.” It is a lightly processed, raw cane sugar similar to those made around the world by rinsing off most of the molasses once the sugar has crystalized, leaving behind fine, light-brown, sparkly crystals that are accented with the aroma and taste of the sugarcane, as well as of the molasses. It also contains trace amounts of their vitamins and minerals. Kibi-zato evolved from the original, completely raw koku-to sugar, as sugar-making moved northwards in Japan in order to meet the lighter taste of the cuisine of Japan’s mainland islands. Today, one of the best artisanal kibi-zato is made on Tanegashima Island, which lies just south of Kyushu Island. There, juice from very high quality sugarcane grown on small family farms is slowly boiled down three times so that the sugar crystalizes multiples times and, thus, naturally and lightly retains some of its molasses, as well as the nuanced aroma and flavor of the sugarcane. During the process, it also lightly caramelizes. Kibi-zato is essentially a natural form of light brown sugar, which is typically a highly refined white sugar that has had some molasses added back to the sugar at the end of the sugar-making process. Cooks who want to cook more naturally and nutritiously and who appreciate kibi-zato’s stronger flavor use it as an all-purpose sugar.
Koku-To / Kuro-Zato (黒糖 / 黒砂糖)
Koku-to is sometimes called kuro-zato, and both words mean “black sugar.” Japan’s oldest sugar, it’s a very dark brown, damp sugar that has a deep, complex, earthy aroma and taste with overtones of chocolate, and a rich sweetness. It can also have notes of acidity and bitterness, depending on how it’s made, and also a smokiness if boiled over a wood fire. It is made across the Okinawan Islands by the traditional method of boiling down sugarcane juice until it crystalizes into slabs that have all the molasses intact. It has the strongest flavor of Japan’s sugars, the most umami, and is laden with vitamins and minerals, including calcium, magnesium, potassium, and iron. Its taste and qualities vary by where it is produced, how it is produced, which part of the final product it comes from, and how it is packaged—ground up, broken into bite-sized pieces, or as slabs. Professional chefs prefer the latter because it contains the most umami and will grind the slabs themselves. Other people like the bits that crust the side of the boiling pan because they taste more chocolatey. Haterumajima Island, a small isolated island at the southern-most end of the Okinawan chain, is known for producing some of the best koku-to. Makers on Amami-Oshima Island pride themself on the distinctive, somewhat lighter flavor of their powdery koku-to, which is made by cold-pressing the juice from the sugarcane and boiling it over a wood fire. The koku-to made on tiny Iejima Island off the northern coast of the main island of Okinawan is considered a well-known secret, and deservedly so, due to its luxurious flavor. They are all worth a try.
Koku-to is a staple of the Okinawan pantry and used in all kinds of savory dishes, being valued for its nutrient content and ability to enrich and tenderize its many pork-based dishes. It is also the perfect counterpoint to Okinawa’s other intensely flavored seasonings, including its sharp, mineral-laden sea salts, intensely sour shikwasa citrus, and piquant koregusui vinegar. Koku-to is used in all kinds of confectionary across Japan, with a little bit of sugar going a long way in adding an interesting and distinctive flavor. It is also eaten “as is” as a candy.
Hard Sugars
There are a small number of hard, dry sugars in the Japanese pantry to make foreign-inspired dishes, including baking, and for special applications. Their main purpose is to support longer cooking times, and they come in a variety of sizes to better regulate moisture retention and the tenderizing of foods, especially meats. They also are good at adding body and luster to sauces.
Guranyu-To (グラニュー糖)
Guranyu-to is a highly refined, dry, white granulated sugar akin to table sugar in the West except that its crystals are smaller. It is considered Japan’s caster sugar and is mainly used for baking, but sometimes is specified for use in a Japanese recipe when a sugar is needed that dissolves more slowly and not add more moisture to a sauce.
Zarame-To (ザラ糖)
Zarame-to is coarse, dry sugar. It is either a white or light brown, pure sugar that comes in a variety of crystal sizes. They’re not types of standard, refined white sugar or brown sugar, like a turbinado raw cane sugar. Instead, they are variations of fruity, sweet-tasting, white johaku-to or caramelized, brown, mildly-savory sanon-to. Zarame-to is a staple of the Japanese kitchen, where it essentially functions as a basting and brining sugar because it slowly melts and dissolves. Zarame-to also adds more body and luster to dishes. It’s used in Japan’s many Chinese-derived simmered and braised meaty dishes, Western soups and stews, and to make long-fermented pickles and stewed adzuki red bean paste. For example, small-crystal, white zarame-to is typically used to braise seafoods while larger crystal, brown zarame-to is used for meats. Zarame-to is also used as a crunchy topping for senbei rice crackers and sweet confections.
Kori-Zato (氷砂糖)
Kori-zato means “ice sugar.” It is large white chunks of johaku-to that are used to make fruit liquors and sweetened vinegars when added to layers of fresh fruit and liquor, typically sho-chu, or vinegar and steeped for days or weeks. Ume-shu (plum liquor) and citrus-infused sushi vinegars are examples. It’s excellent for making fruit syrups preserved with vinegar, called “shrubs” in the U.S.
Tensai-To (てんさい糖)
Japan also produces beet sugar, called tensai-to, from beets grown on the northern island of Hokkaido. It is mainly used in the processed food industry. There is an unrefined version sold in supermarkets for cooks who appreciate its high level of oligosaccharide, which is a digestive aid, and other nutrients. It is light brown in color, grainy, and has a taste and aroma best described as “sugary.”
Story & Photos: Tom Schiller
Key Words
Tō (糖) — Sugar
Satō (砂糖) — Granulated Sugar
Amai (甘い) — Sweet
Amami (甘味) — Sweetness
Tōdo (糖度) — Sugar Content
How to Season with Sugar
Japan’s cooks typically have several types of sugar in their pantry to be used depending on the ingredients of a dish, type of cooking method, and the other seasonings being used. The key points for seasoning with sugar are:
Sugar comes first in seasoning foods for several important reasons. One, it is denser than the other seasonings and takes longer to dissolve and penetrate into foods. Two, it is hard to correct for later. If you find a dish needs more sweetness at the end of the cooking process to get the taste balance right, you will need to add a lot more sugar than if you had added it at the beginning because salt and acid suppress sugar. Flip that logic around and you see that if you add a bit too much sugar at the beginning of cooking it can easily be corrected for later with salt and acid to balance an unwanted sweet taste. Three, sugar has a long, lingering effect on the flavor of a dish, and this base note is best added at the start of cooking to help score the entire process.
Don’t taste for sweetness but for fullness and roundedness. If your dish starts to taste sweet, stop adding sugar (unless you want it to taste sweet as in sweet-sour and salty-sweet dishes). If you’ve crossed the sweetness threshold, balance the taste with salt and acid.
Bear in mind that salt intensifies the taste of sugar as it does for all foods.
Japan’s cooks often use sugar in combination with other sweeteners because of the different functions they provide. Typically, that’s sake. Very often it’s also hon-mirin. Together they contribute a lot to the success of a dish—enhancing aroma, flavor, body, and luster. In particular, sake and hon-mirin contribute to the building of umami in a dish, which helps to reduce the need to use pure sugar.
Tips for making Japanese recipes and using Japanese sugars:
Don’t eliminate the sugar included in a Japanese recipe (for Japanese or any other kind of dish). The dish will be less tasty and also imbalanced, and you’ll likely compensate by adding more salt, fats, and oils. However, you can start out by using a bit less sugar and see how the dish goes. If you end up needing a bit more sugar later on, use a finishing type of sweetener like hon-mirin. You’ll also get the benefit of more umami. You can never have enough umami in a dish.
Use whichever sugar you like. Japanese sugars can be substituted on a 1:1 basis. Be creative and experiment. The only caveat is to be mindful of the cooking time and the sugar’s dissolvability. For example, don’t use large, dry crystals in cold preparations and quick cooked dishes.
Johaku-to and sanon-to weigh more and have more body than dry granulated sugar, about 20% more. If you substitute a dry, granulated sugar for a Japanese sugar, use 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons of sugar if the recipe calls for one tablespoon and about 2/3 teaspoon if one teaspoon is called for.
While Japanese sugars are different from foreign ones, there are some approximations, if you need to substitute:
Caster Sugar for Johaku-To
Muscovado for Koku-To
Turbinado for Zarame-To
You can also try making your own johaku-to by adding 1% water and 1% invert sugar syrup to dry, granulated sugar. There are several good YouTube videos explaining how to make invert sugar syrup at home.
Last, consider that Japanese meals don’t end with a sugar-laden, very sweet dessert. They end with rice, pickles, and miso or clear soup and sometimes also with fruit or a very small confection. Keep your desserts small or have some fruit so that the rest of the meal can be delicious!
Where to Buy
Most supermarkets across Japan carry a full range of Japanese sugars. They’ll at least certainly carry johaku-to, sanon-to, guranyu-to, zarame-to, and kori-zato. Tomiz, a specialty store devoted to baking that has locations across the country, also carries the full range of sugars. To make sure you get the best brands of wasanbon-to, kibi-zato, and koku-to, go to upmarket supermarkets like Meidi-ya, Seijo-ishi, and Yaoichi (the latter in Kyoto), as well as to the food halls of any of the major department stores.
In Tokyo, many prefectures have what are called “antenna” shops where you can buy regional artisanal foods. These are your best bet for choosing from a range of Japan’s unique, traditional sugars. The antenna shops of prefectures in which artisanal sugars are made are all located in the Ginza-Yurakucho area within walking distance of one another as follows:
Wasanbon-To
Kagawa & Tokushima Prefectures: Tokushima / Kagawa Tomoni Market, 2-10-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0006. Open every day 10:30-18:00.
Tel: +81 (03) 6269 9688
Web: https://www.ginza-web.com/detail/56/index.html.
Kibi-Zato & Koku-To
Kagoshima Prefecture: Kagoshima Yurakukan, 1-6-4 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0006. Open every day 11:00-19:00.
Tel: +81 (03) 3580 8821
Web: https://www.pref.kagoshima.jp/yurakukan/
Okinawa Prefecture: Ginza Washita Shop, Maruit Ginza Bldg, 1−3−9, Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0061. Open every day 10:30-19:00.
Tel: +81 (03) 3535 6991
Web: https://www.washita.co.jp/info/shop/ginza/
If you’re traveling through any of these prefectures, stop by the local “michi no eki,” which are food marketplaces alongside main roads and in town centers, and also at farmers’ markets you might come across along your way. At these, you’ll have the widest choice, including sugars made by the smallest mills and individual sugarcane farmers, and also the chance to taste them.
