Mentaiko is a Japanese dish made from pickled pollock roe that can be eaten plain or combined with other ingredients in popular dishes such as onigiri and pasta. It is marinated in ingredients such as chili, sake, yuzu citrus, and konbu, and is available worldwide in most supermarkets specializing in Japanese cuisine.
Mentaiko is a Japanese dish of pollock roe, or roe, pickled in various ingredients to make it spicy. It can be eaten plain, often served as an accompaniment when drinking sake, which is Japanese rice wine. It can also be combined with other ingredients in various popular dishes in Japan such as in a sauce with noodles and in onigiri, where it is wrapped in rice. Due to the ingredients used to flavor it, it remains preserved. Mentaiko is available free in Japan – Fukuoka being the city where it originated – and most supermarkets specialize in Japanese cuisine, worldwide.
Thought to originally come from Korea, mentaiko comes from the roe of Alaska pollock, which are a fish commonly caught in the North Pacific Ocean. The roe, which is fully formed fish roe, is removed from the fish and then prepared. The recipes may differ from chef to chef and the Korean version differs from the Japanese one and is called myeongran jeot. The color and taste of mentaiko depend on what is added to the eggs.
Examples of the flavorful ingredients that are used are chili, sake, yuzu citrus, and konbu, in which pollock roe is marinated for several hours, during which time it absorbs the flavors and color of the ingredients. Yuzu citrus is a citrus fruit native to Japan that is about the size of a tangerine and is very acidic. It is often hard to find in the rest of the world, although some specialty food stores may sometimes have it. Konbu is a type of edible seaweed or seaweed, which is very salty and is rich in many minerals.
After marinating for a few hours, the mentaiko turns an orange to red color and is then either removed from its natural membrane and placed in jars or left in the membrane and packaged as such. When served plain, while drinking sake, the mentaiko is removed from the membrane or jar and served. Onigiri is another popular dish in Japanese cuisine and consists of a ball of rice, often wrapped in a filling such as mentaiko and sometimes encrusted in seaweed, making it easy to carry and eat.
Another popular dish that is prepared using mentaiko is pasta or mentaiko. Recipes differ widely and range from adding mentaiko, as is, to pasta, to more complicated dishes. These can include combinations of cream, mayonnaise, butter and sake.
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