Saké 101
- Chapter 1: What is Saké?
- Chapter 2: How is Saké Made?
- Chapter 3: Saké Vocabulary
- Chapter 4: Types of Saké
- Chapter 5: How to Serve Saké
- Chapter 6: Tasting Saké
- Chapter 7: Uncommon Pairs
Chapter 7: Uncommon Pairs
I view saké as a white wine. I select food to go with saké, and saké with food, just as I would pair a chardonnay, pinot gris, gewürztraminer, riesling, sauterne or other white wine with food.
Matching saké and food to each other to enhance the quality of a meal is, at once, extremely simple and incredibly difficult. The simple part is this: if you remember a few basic guidelines, and enjoy a moderate degree of gastronomic exploration and experimentation, you cannot go too far wrong. The difficult part is this: there is no "perfect" food-and-saké combination. Not every combination, no matter how obvious, works for everyone. But that's OK. Somewhere between the two extremes – the casual, spontaneous approach and the rigorous, classical approach – most people find their own comfort zone.
There are basically two ways to pair a saké with food, and they are similar to how wine and food are paired. Either match a saké with a dish that has similar or complementary flavors, similar intensity, or pair the saké and food for their contrast.
Think of matching power with power. As flavor intensifies, so should the flavor in the accompanying saké, or one may overwhelm the other. Generally food that is (in rough order of intensity) poached, steamed, sautéed, pan-fried, stir-fried, deep-fried, roasted, broiled, grilled, or blackened, might respectively be matched with Silver, fruit infused, Diamond, Ruby, Genshu, Nama. Pearl is generally served with dessert or as a contrast with spicy BBQ or hot Asian dishes including curry.
