Bored of Turkey? Try a Japanese Thanksgiving!

If you, like me, have been a little bit bored with the traditional dry Thanksgiving turkey, why not try a Japanese Thanksgiving? Of course, you could also have this meal at Christmas or any other time, too. But since my cousin and I were both a little bored of the same old same old we thought we’d try something different. Hence: Japanese Thanksgiving was born. By the way, I’ve written about holiday recipes before. Here are some of the Best Holiday Recipes of #DigiBlogChat from 2020.

Why a Japanese Thanksgiving?

To backtrack just a little, my cousin and I are both half Japanese, or hapa (half) in Japanese. We’ve been wanting to make more Japanese food for a while and test out our cooking skills. Also, we both lost our mothers recently, and cooking some non-mainstream American meals seemed like a good way to remember our moms and reconnect with our Japanese ancestry. I’d been talking to good friend Terri Nakamura about our menu recently, and she suggested I add the turkey recipe to my blog somehow (Thanks, Terri!), and one thing led to another.

Japanese Senbei are oishi!

Appetizers–Senbei, of course

If you’ve ever hung out with Japanese families, they always always always have snacks around. If you ever travel to Japan, you’ll be amazed at the number of snacks there are everywhere. The food is delicious and convenient. For the appetizers, we chose a few different crackers (senbei)and snacks. My favorite of these was the wasabi lotus (those are the ones right in front in the picture above). We also had homemade gyoza, which another neighbor made from scratch!

Kimpira and Hijiki round out a Japanese Thanksgiving

Side dishes with seaweed help round out a Japanese Thanksgiving

Some of my favorite Japanese dishes are the side dishes–things like Kimpira (stir-fried carrot and burdock root), and hijiki which is the small black seaweed dish. To be honest, I bought these–making each and every side dish, plus all the crackers would’ve been daunting for a first Japanese Thanksgiving!

The main course: Turkey

For our Thanksgiving meal, I chose turkey thighs, which I cut up and marinated, based on a recipe I found on Yang’s website: Japanese Grilled Turkey Skewers. This is a remake of a Yakitori, or grilled chicken, recipe. I marinated the turkey thigh pieces overnight, which made them very flavorful. The next day, I soaked the wooden skewers and threaded the turkey onto them. We grilled the turkey on our outdoor grill. Tips: next time I’ll have the butcher cut up the meat, since that was the most time-consuming part of making the turkey.

Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Shio Koji

Cranberry-Orange Sauce with Ginger

Cranberry-orange sauce has become a tradition for Thanksgiving, and this year rather than skip it, my bestie made it, but added grated and dried ginger to it for an Asian twist. For the best results, make it the day before and let the flavors mix overnight.

Creamy Mashed Potatoes with Shio Koji

My cousin came up with this recipe. She’s a wonderful cook, and everyone loved these mashed potatoes! Shio koji is a fermented paste, similar to miso, here made with rice. It’s possible to make your own fermentation, but I think my cousin bought hers and added it to the potatoes.

Vegan Mushroom Gravy

Vegan Mushroom Gravy

Something you can’t ever have enough of is gravy, and this mushroom gravy was yummier than gravies I’ve had in the past, and didn’t make you feel urpy (anyone else lactose-intolerant out there will probably love this gravy!). Did you know that a lot of Asians are lactose-intolerant?

Miso-Glazed Root Veggies

Miso-Glazed Root Vegetables

Another favorite of everyone who still had room in their stomachs was the miso-glazed root veggies. Honestly, I got so full that I couldn’t even try these until the next day.

Enhanced Stuffing

Enhanced Stuffing

My 13-year-old stepson was particularly fond of this stuffing, and kept eating more and more of it.

Green Beans wrapped with Bacon

Green Beans Wrapped with Bacon

Again, there was so much food that these green beans had to wait until the next day to be tasted!

Drinks

For drinks, we had Prosecco cocktails (basically just Prosecco with pear nectar or apple juice). Simple, but delicious. We also had an assortment of Japanese IPA beer. Did you know there’s Japanese IPA beer with things like Matcha added? Of course, we had to taste some of those.

Dessert was not Japanese!

We also had rum cake, which I made and then forgot to take a picture of–grrrr! It soaked in 151 rum overnight (probably illegal in some parts of the country). The recipe called for spiced rum, but I think spiced rum is kind of disgusting. Also, I only had the 151 rum, so there is that.