Explaining steps in a recipe

In trying to find a subject for my first article I stumbled across some English Lessons on a Japanese site, trying to teach how you would discuss dinner/recipe instructions. I was trying to find good examples of explaining sequences so it seemed like a good place to start. I settled upon "Mike"'s first description:

まかしとけ。まずタマネギ1/2個をみじん切りにして、油でさっと炒める。そしてシメジをバラバラにしておくんだ

https://www.nasluck-kitchen.jp/english/e_con/kitchen/

As shown in the image I am yet to link at the time of writing, the translation this lesson provides to budding Japanese to English students is "Leave it to me. First I chop up half of an onion and saute it in oil. Then I sprinkle in the shimeji mushrooms."

Let's break it down.

1. まかしとけ - Leave it to me.

I didn't look at this phrase until the end as it seemed to be pretty simple but it turns out to have an insane amount of lore and is probably something to come back to another day.

  • If you google "まかしとけ meaning" you actually get linked to a lot of pages telling you the definition of "任せとけ" or "まかせとけ".
  • The kanji "任" means responsibility or duty and other similar things. However in this phrase it is often just written as the kana instead.
  • I can't find out why it is written as "しとけ" instead of "せとけ" here. It might just be a regional dialect.

  • まかせる the verb means "to entrust" or similar.
  • "とけ" is the shortened form of "〜ておく" meaning to do something for future convenience.
  • To add "とけ" to "まかせる" you get the "て" form of the verb (まかせて) and the verb "おく" meaning to put/place. When oku is attached to another verb (here using te) it means to sort of put it out of your mind rather than put an object somewhere physically. This sort of turns it into entrust it to me so you can put it out of your mind

Thankfully there are probably also several million other ways to say leave it to me but this a very casual way of doing it.

2. まずタマネギ1/2個をみじん切りにして油でさっと炒める - First I chop up half of an onion and saute it in oil

2.1 まずタマネギ1/2個をみじん切りにして - First I chop up half of an onion (and)

This one starts off fairly nicely. It starts with the word まず meaning first, indicating it is the first step of the instructions he is giving.

It then immediately gets freaky because of the sentence structure but it still mostly makes sense. It talks about:

  • タマネギ (onion)
  • 1/2 個 (half of one item "ko" counter for small and round things?)

to reference that he is using half of an onion.

Then you get the phrase "をみじん切りにして".

  • The を particle connects this to the aforementioned half of an onion.
  • みじん切り - "mijin-giri" is a specific style of chopping that is like finely mincing.
    • みじん - dust/atom/tiny pieces (epic)
    • 切る - "giri" - to cut. Following "mijin" means that "mijin" is noted as a style of cutting. It can seemingly be pronounced giri or kiri depending on what it follows but it is mostly giri and I will look into why it is kiri sometimes another day.
  • にして - notably not the common meaning of "ni shite" which is like "at a specific time" or "under certain conditions".
    • に - particle connecting the following verb to the cutting style
    • して - this is the "て" form of the verb "する", meaning "to do". However as it has been pointed at something it can also mean "to decide on" or "to make". In this specific case, it has been pointed to a cutting style and so means to cut the onion up in that style.
      • Interesting difference to how you would probably say it in English. While you might say "use this style to do this action on this object" it translates here more to "make the onion be in this cutting style"
      • The "て" form is used to connect it to the phrase I have not spoken about yet but is eagerly waiting for me to get there. It is similar to going "and then".

2.2 油でさっと炒める - saute it in oil

This one is pretty simple compared to the previous one as there is not much connecting to do.

  • 油 - Kanji meaning oil
  • で - "de" particle specifying the means something is done
  • さっと - "satto" - quickly lightly or briefly
  • 炒める - "itameru" - to cook/fry/saute/stir-fry.

The main interesting thing about this phrase is that they translated out the extra emphasis on "quickly" because in English "saute" already implies that it is quickly.

3. そしてシメジをバラバラにしておくんだ - Then I sprinkle in the shimeji mushrooms.

This one also isn't particularly insane but is a little weird. It starts off with "そして" to mean "and then/and", so doing it after the previous instructions. Then it mentions "シメジを" which is a specific type of mushroom (shimeji) and the object particle to connect it to the upcoming verb.

Then it ends with "バラバラにしておく", which does not really specify anything about sprinkling. - バラバラ - meaning "pieces/loose/scattered" - にしておく - this reuses some bits that we learnt earlier - "ni" particle marking the following verb to the loose pieces - uses the verb "する" again, meaning to do - also uses the "〜ておく" ending of a verb to mean "in advance, for convenience etc." meaning it sort of ends up literally as "scatter the mushrooms so it is ready for the next step" but I think it carries heavy implication that you just put them in the pan alongside the saute'd onions.

This also ends with "んだ" which is sort of an identifier that the sentence was an explanation rather than a random statement, but it does not have a direct translation to English - it's just an emphasis.

4. Next Time

Perhaps next time I will go into different types of verbs/verb endings or more information on the "て" form. I could also look at a real recipe instead of this insane roleplay.