November 11, 2024

Since 1994, Kikkoman Trading Europe GmbH (KTE), the Kikkoman Group’s sales and marketing company in Europe, has held ‘Concours Kikkoman”, an annual cooking contest using Kikkoman Soy Sauce designed for young chefs across France. Application screening narrowed a total of sixty-two applicants down to ten, and thereafter a strict culinary evaluation was used to further select two final winners. In October 2024, as the prize for winning the 30th Concours Kikkoman, these two young chefs were awarded a tour to Japan, including visits to Tokyo and Kyoto, to experience Japanese food culture. As main events of this tour, Kikkoman provided a Japanese cooking workshop and a tour of the Kikkoman Soy Sauce Museum, located in Noda city, Chiba prefecture.

For the Japanese cooking workshop, a two-day course was held with the collaboration of Hattori Nutrition College, a prominent cooking school located in Shibuya, Tokyo. In the first day’s lecture, the young chefs learned about the various types of Japanese chef knifes and these sharpening methods, and then practiced how to cut vegetables and fillet fish. They then used these cut ingredients to cook tempura (battered and deep-fried seafood and vegetables) and tendon (tempura over rice), and learned the proper ratios for using Kikkoman tsuyu (soy sauce-based soups) and tare (soy sauce-based dipping and marinade sauces), as well as other delicious ways to cook with these seasonings. The lecture thereafter provided instruction on how to prepare dashi (Japanese broth), a flavor essential of Japanese cuisine, and dishes that make the most of dashi. The participants also received hands-on training for how to shave katsuobushi (dried and smoked bonito) and combine this with kombu (kelp) to prepare dashi from scratch. With a deep sense of the contrasting distinctions between the alike yet different culinary cultures of French bouillon (broth prepared from meat and aromatic vegetables) and Japanese dashi, the two winners strived to learn even more about this new food culture as they intently listened to their instructor’s explanations.

On the second day, the morning was spent learning how to prepare fish for otsukuri (also known as sashimi, sliced raw fish) as well as challenging nigiri sushi (hand-pressed sushi) and chirashi sushi (scattered sushi), each applying the culinary skills acquired in the first day of the workshop. In the afternoon, participants learned about the golden ratios of soy sauce, mirin and dashi, which vary depending on the dish, and put this learning into practice by making rice bowl dishes (oyakodon, chicken and egg over rice, and gyukatsudon, deep-fried wagyu beef cutlet over rice) as well as sukiyaki (Japanese beef hot pot). Through cooking and tasting zaru soba (chilled buckwheat noodles) and zaru udon (chilled wheat flour noodles), the young chefs learned about dashi flavoring for Japanese noodle dishes, the meaning (complements to the chef!) behind slurping noodles in Japan, as well as their deliciousness.

At the end of the cooking contest, the instructor conveyed to the participants, “you both are talented young chefs, who are destined to become top chefs, and I would like for you to pass along the appeals of Japanese cuisine that you have learned by coming to Japan to your future apprentices”, to this the participants responded, “we are deeply grateful for this invaluable experience, and will share it after we return to France”. The firsthand experience gained will certainly provide motivation as they continue culinary training in their homeland.

KTE will continue to promote the international exchange of food culture, fusing Kikkoman Soy Sauce with various global cuisines, and foster the growth of young culinary professionals who will play a key role in shaping the future of food.