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Use Your Potto To Cook Eggs

thomas — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:10:04 +0000

Another potto hack, this time for cooking eggs! Reader TedinAsia explains with a cool story:

Many many years ago when I was working in a very old trading company in Osaka, old building, smoke stained walls, etc. At 17:00 we would always have a 15min tea break with a small snack provided by the company. (This apparently was to hold us over till our 21:00 dinner break)…these were the old days.

In the summer we all got a hard boiled egg, every day on rotation it was someone’s duty to take the eggs out an hour before so they warm up and wont crack, then we would put them in a plastic bag with a little tap water then submerge the bag in the potto with the top hanging out, close up the lid and in about 20 min we had a nice hard boiled egg with our tea. 15 min gets you a nice onsen tamago. 4 Seasons and 4 different treats, Spring pickles, Summer tamago, Fall baked sweet potatos & Winter baked omochi on the gas heater. We still try to carry on the tradition with the family now on the weekends in Sendai.
Be well, br, T

Egg + plastic bag + potto = hard-boiled egg! I gotta try this at work. Thanks TedinAsia!

Other potto hacks:

Use Your Potto For Quick Veggies

thomas — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:17:13 +0000

In a comment to my last tip about using your potto to reduce your wait time for boiling water, helpful reader Pouncy gives this tip:

I use it for thawing frozen veggies in a flash. No cooking, just soak in hot water for about 30 seconds and drain for wonderful peas and corn. It makes really quick oatmeal and al dente instant ramen, too!

What a great idea! Pull your frozen corn out of the freezer, put some in a bowl, pour 90 degree water from your potto, wait thirty seconds and you’re done! It’s easy enough to make a snack of it.

Do you have any denki potto tips? Kitchen tips in general? Drop a comment!

Use Your “Potto” For Pasta

thomas — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:05:25 +0000

Do you have a potto? No, not the tailless ape. I mean a denki potto (電気ポット). A denki potto is a hot water machine. People use it to make coffee and tea. We keep one plugged in at our house to make baby formula, cocoa and tea. It’s very convenient.

Another use for the potto is when you are making pasta, soup or any other food that requires a large quantity of boiling water. Instead of pouring water from your sink and waiting 10 minutes to get it to boil, pour water from your potto! You’ll have a pan full of boiling water in a very short time. Our denki potto keeps the water at 90 degrees Celsius. That’s not far from boiling!

If you don’t own a denki potto, you can buy one pretty cheap. A low-end one costs about 4000 yen.

Do you have any denki potto tricks? Let me know in the comments.

Keep Yourself Warm With Yutampo

thomas — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:27:49 +0000

It’s the middle of winter and finally the weather feels like it! It’s cold!

If your feet are frozen when you sleep at night, you might want to invest in a yutampo.

A yutampo (湯たんぽ） is just a hot water bottle, and they seem to be making a comeback in Japan. My wife asked for one for Christmas so I got one for her. It’s really simple to use – just fill it with hot water, seal and stick it under the futon. It will warm you up and possibly save you from keeping the heater on all night.

MUJI has one for under 1000 yen.

Save On Cleaning Products Revisited – Buy House Brands

thomas — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:09:52 +0000

Reader Ken Y-N of What Japan Thinks writes in with a great tip for saving on cleaning products. Buy house brands:

Another tip for saving on Bath Magiclean is to find an equivalent own-brand, but for that one you have to check that the — whatever the active ingredient is — is the right percentage, as the lower percentage products are pretty useless. Magiclean has 8% or 9% on the label, so get an own-brand with 8%; the 4% stuff doesn’t cut it. We buy – what do we buy? I forget, but it’s from Konan and about 85 yen a bottle. Even though we don’t have a car, we go once every two months or so to the nearest DIY/Home Centre superstore and fill up two or three big trolleys-worth of household stuff, and even with the trains and 800 yen delivery cost we save money (and time, of course!) over the local stores.

Shampoo and body soap, etc, also comes in refills so you don’t have to keep buying the pump-action bottles.

The word you want to look for on the back of the bottle is kaimen kasseizai (界面活性剤 [かいめんかっせいざい]), which means “active ingredient”.

Homemade Tofu Soap Dish

thomas — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:48:22 +0000

Ahhh..the soap dish.

Most people here in Japan live reasonably close to a grocery store, but it isn’t always the same story for a 100-yen shop. Going out of your way to get to the 100-yen shop isn’t such a big deal if you have a big shopping list, but what if you just need one thing? In most cases you can hold off on the trip until you gather a few more items on your list, but what if you need it now?

This was my situation when I finally decided to toss the old, nasty soap dish that was in my bathroom. A trip to the hyaku-en shop costs me 640 yen round-trip, so it wasn’t economical to head out there for just a soap dish. For days I just let my soap sit in the middle of the sink, sordid and alone, when suddenly I had an epiphany one night while making dinner: homemade tofu soap dish.

To make your own homemade tofu soap dish, for cheaper than 100-yen, you will need the following:

tofu
scissors
soap (optional)

Here’s what we do:

Buy some tofu. For best results get a package that is deep. Make sure that it’s big enough to hold your bar of soap. I bought this double-pack of tofu for 98 yen.
Eat the tofu. Put it on a small plate and pour some soy sauce on top, or just add some to your miso soup. Delicious!
Tear off the excess plastic from the package.
Using scissors, cut some holes in the bottom. This is so water doesn’t accumulate in your soap dish and dissolve your soap prematurely.
Place your new homemade soap dish in your bathroom, and drop some soap in there. Perfect fit!

Making this soap dish takes about 1 minute, and if you eat tofu with any frequency it costs you nothing. If after a while your soap dish starts to get old and nasty, you can just throw it out and make a new one.

Save On Cleaning Products By Buying Refills.

thomas — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:00:18 +0000

Here’s a tip that was sitting right in front of my face for months before I figured it out: buy refills.

Most cleaning products in Japan are sold in two styles: normal and refill. Not surprisingly, the refill is usually cheaper. A normal bottle of Joy dish soap, pictured at far left costs me 148 yen. The refill bottle has almost twice as much soap but only costs 248 yen. Not huge savings, but every little bit helps. I get an even better deal on my Bath Magiclean. A normal bottle sells for 312 yen. The refill, which contains almost the same amount of cleaner, costs 148 yen. That’s less than half price!

With the plethora of single-purpose cleaners that exist here in Japan, it can cost a pretty penny to keep your house clean. Buying refills can easily save you a few 1000 yen bills a year. Refill packages also tend to be smaller, so they take up less space in your trash/recycle bin.

The word to look for is tsumekaeyou (つめかえ用, [つめかえよう]), literally “for refill”. Most stores stock the refills right next to the normal bottles, but this isn’t always the case. If you can’t find it after a quick search, find an employee and they should be able to bring you right to it. Talking to store employees is a fun way to practice your Japanese too.

Note: As the name suggests, you will have to have an empty bottle at home to pour the contents of the refill into. If it’s your first trip to the store, buy a normal bottle.