Originally, Ichiju sansai consisted of the staple food of rice, soup, and three different side dishes (such as pickles, eggplant, and grilled and simmered dishes). In Japanese, Ichiju sansai is wrttiten in these kanjis 一汁三菜, and they mean ‘一one, 汁soup, 三three, 菜vegitables, respectively.
Today, the style has evolved a bit and refers to a set that includes a main dish and whatever two other side dishes you’d like, in addition to rice and soup.
Let’s talk about the merits of eating this style of meal! First of all, Ichiju Sansai uses many various ingredients to ensure good nutrition. As a result, this type of meal is easy to adjust and balance. For instance, if the main dish does not contain enough vegetables, you can make it up with the other two dishes. A second advantage is that this type of serving style prevents overeating. Keeping the portion sizes small makes it easy to see how much you are eating, unless of course you refill your rice! 😊 Lastly, when you eat one dish with all ingredients cooked together, the ingredients all reach your stomach at the same time. However, with Ichiju Sansai improves digestion and absorption; eliminating excess fats, sugar, and salt due to the variety of nutrients going into your stomach one by one and then combining. It takes time to eat this style of meal, and this enables all the science above to happen! You can even take care in ordering your side dishes so that your blood sugar stays level and maintained. In this way, it is good for a variety of dietary needs.
There is a demerit of this serving form, however. When cooking, you must take care not to use the same ingredients too frequently in your dishes. If the same things are present for all three dishes, your nutrition will suddenly be unbalanced. Similarly, your cooking methods should also vary. For example, deep frying all three of your dishes would result in a very oily meal, as you can imagine!
Let’s focus on all the benefits of Ichiju Sansai: good nutrition, digestion, and a variety of ingredients in one meal! Let’s see how many ingredients you can use!
