🇯🇵 JapanCatalog recipe
Blanched spinach wrung dry and tossed in a nutty ground-sesame dressing sharpened with soy and a touch of sugar — the small green dish that rounds out a Japanese home meal.
For 4 servings.
No reviews yet
Cooked this? Be the first to tell everyone how it went.
Sign in to rate and review this recipe.
Sign in to suggest corrections and improvements.
Community posts are opinions, not professional advice. Community guidelines
Videos belong to their creators and play on their platform’s terms — Cibora never re-hosts third-party video.
Buy these ingredients
Links open each store’s own site, where you see their live local prices. Our cost figures in the app are estimates only.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and blanch the spinach for 45 seconds until just wilted and still bright green.
Plunge immediately into a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking, then drain.
💡 This shock is what keeps the spinach vivid green instead of drab olive.
Squeeze the spinach firmly in bunches to wring out as much water as possible, then cut into 3–4 cm lengths.
Grind the sesame seeds in a mortar or spice grinder until about half are crushed and fragrant, then stir in the tamari, sugar and kombu stock to make a thick dressing.
Toss the spinach through the dressing just before serving and finish with a scattering of whole sesame seeds.
Goma-ae, 'sesame-dressed,' is one of the older techniques in Japanese home cooking, built on ground sesame long before it was routinely paired with soy sauce. Spinach became its most common partner once the vegetable spread widely through Japan, and the dish now appears as a fixed side on izakaya tables and school lunch trays alike — small, green, and rarely absent from a full spread.
No suggestions yet. Spotted a wrong quantity, a missing step, or a better technique? Suggest it — accepted changes join the recipe’s version history.
Sign in to join the discussion. Reading is open to everyone.
Nothing here yet — questions about technique, timing, and substitutions all welcome.