Anime Recipe: Yukihira Style Char Okakiage from Food wars

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Today, we're making the recipe that inspired this series to begin with and prompted Anthony to ask me to seriously do this: the Yukihira Style Char Okakiage from Food Wars. In the episode, Yukihira takes his teacher's kaki no tane - a Japanese snack of rice crackers and peanuts - and uses it to create breading for some fish to fry it.

This recipe was available from the manga - you can find the page from the manga here if you want the original recipe and instructions - but I made a few substitutions due to certain vegetables not being available at my grocery stores, plus I ended up changing up the egg sauce a little bit. I'll be listing how I made this below.

Typically, Japanese egg yolk sauce uses raw eggs (disclaimer: consuming raw eggs may increase your risk of food-borne illness) and you essentially whip them with oil. However, I don't have a hand mixer, nor do I have the hand strength to successfully beat the eggs by hand - we have a KitchenAid mixer, but this required so few eggs that the bowl for that would have been comically big.

​So, to still match the presentation of the dish, I decided to make a scrambled egg garnish since scrambling the eggs would also give them a fluffy appearance. If a raw egg sauce isn't your thing, you're more than welcome to try this as well - it came out surprisingly delicious, as I'll go into more detail about later.

Unlike Yukihira, we're air-frying our fish instead of deep-frying - though  you can totally still deep fry this if you'd prefer! 
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Ingredients to serve four

• 4 filets of white fish (we used tilapia, but you can use any white fish)
• 100 g kaki no tane
• 0.5 cup flour
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp olive oil 
• 2 tsp mint (if your store has perilla leaves, use that!) 
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• Brussels sprouts (to save prep time, get some frozen steam-in-a-bag that are pre-seasoned; Anthony doesn't usually like Brussels sprouts, but really liked the pre-seasoned one from Bird's Eye)
• Green beans
• Napa cabbage

Instructions

1. Take 100 g of kaki no tane and mix in a food processor until it is crumb-like. Place this in a bowl. In another bowl, place 0.5 cup flour.
2. Separate the yolks from the whites of two of the eggs. Crack the third egg (including the whites) into the bowl with the yolks. Set the egg whites aside in a different bowl.
3. Add 1 tsp each of salt and pepper to the egg yolk bowl, then scramble. Stir constantly to get a thin yet still fluffy consistency, and remove from heat once scrambled. Let sit in fridge while you cook your fish.
4. Devein your fish as you cut filets in half, resulting in 8 strips. Coat each strip completely in flour, then egg white, then kaki no tane. Repeat until all are coated (I recommend letting them sit on a frying rack on top of a plate before you put in the air fryer so you don't get excess crumbs all over your counter!)
5. Air fry your fish for 10-15 minutes (depending on how thick your fish strips are) at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 
6. Steam your Brussels sprouts, Napa cabbage, and green beans (you can do this on the stovetop or in the microwave; I just put mine in the microwave). You can have as many of these as you'd like; we used one cabbage leaf per plate, and split the green beans and Brussels sprouts up into quarters. 
7. Sprinkle 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp lemon juice on your vegetables and plate. Add fish to your plate.
8. Remove the scrambled egg garnish from the fridge. Add two tsp olive oil and mix well. Top with mint leaves and add to plate.

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The Verdict

Even though the egg sauce ended up being more of a scrambled egg garnish, it was still really tasty! The flavor was a nice contrast from the kaki no tane on the fish, which balanced it really nicely. You really do need a hand beater to make the egg yolks fluffy and almost like a meringue, which we didn't have. So for me personally, this struggle brought the ease of replication score down to a 7/10 instead of a 10/10.

Speaking of the kaki no tane, this was a huge hit for both me and Anthony. It made for a fantastic breading on the fish and gave it a nice nutty flavor. The only thing that had me disappointed is that kaki no tane typically has a bit more of a kick to it when eaten on its own - they include paprika or similar spices in the rice crackers - but the white fish mellowed it out. I was looking for a bit more flavor from the kaki no tane, so the taste facts gets a 9/10 - overall bringing our total score for this dish to an 8/10. 

While I don't think I'd try my hand at the egg garnish/sauce again, I would absolutely use kaki no tane instead of panko in the future!

Oh, and if you're counting your calories - I actually plugged this one in as a recipe in My Fitness Pal instead of just tracking the individual components in my tracker, ha! The way I made it comes out to 400 calories including the veggies, but if you make the egg sauce how it's actually intended instead of a scrambled egg garnish, it's about 365 calories.

Have a food from an anime that you want me to try to recreate? Let me know in the comments below! Plus, follow me on TikTok to see the behind the scenes of how this was made.
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