The kitchen as meditation
One ingredient.
Full attention.
Kanso Kitchen is a practice of simplicity. We cook with fewer ingredients, more intention, and the belief that nourishment begins before the first bite.
Our approach
Kanso: the beauty of elimination
In Japanese aesthetics, kanso means simplicity achieved by eliminating the unnecessary. In our kitchen, this means five ingredients or fewer per recipe, seasonal produce from local farms, and techniques that honor the ingredient rather than mask it. We do not add what is not needed. We do not rush what asks for patience.
Every recipe on this site has been tested in a home kitchen with a single burner, a good knife, and whatever the market offered that morning. No special equipment. No rare imports. Just attention.
Cook
Seasonal Recipes
Dashi Ochazuke
Winter · 15 min
Rice steeped in fragrant dashi broth with pickled plum, nori, and wasabi. The simplest meal, and often the most satisfying.
Steamed rice, kombu dashi, umeboshi, toasted nori, wasabi
Spring Onigiri
Spring · 20 min
Hand-formed rice triangles filled with seasoned bamboo shoot and shiso leaf. A bento essential that celebrates restraint.
Short-grain rice, bamboo shoot, shiso, sea salt, nori
Cold Somen
Summer · 10 min
Ice-chilled wheat noodles with a clean tsuyu dipping sauce and grated ginger. When heat demands simplicity.
Somen noodles, tsuyu, fresh ginger, scallion, myoga
Miso-Glazed Kabocha
Autumn · 35 min
Roasted Japanese pumpkin with a white miso and mirin glaze. Sweet, savory, and impossibly tender.
Kabocha squash, white miso, mirin, sesame seeds
Essentials
Cooking Tools
Nakiri Knife
$89A vegetable knife with a flat blade for precise, even cuts. The foundation of Japanese home cooking.
Donabe Clay Pot
$120Handcrafted earthenware for slow-cooked rice, hot pots, and soups that taste like they took hours.
Suribachi Mortar
$45A ridged ceramic mortar for grinding sesame seeds, making dressings, and preparing gomashio.
Hinoki Cutting Board
$75Japanese cypress wood that is naturally antibacterial, gentle on blades, and beautiful on your counter.
Stock
The Kanso Pantry
Kombu
Hokkaido
The foundation of all dashi
White Miso
Kyoto
Sweet, mild, and endlessly versatile
Rice Vinegar
Kyoto
Gentle acidity for dressings and sushi
Toasted Sesame Oil
Kagoshima
A few drops transform any dish
Katsuobushi
Makurazaki
Smoked bonito for rich umami
Mirin
Aichi
Sweet rice wine for glazes and balance
Soy Sauce
Chiba
Naturally brewed, aged two years
Shichimi
Kyoto
Seven-spice blend with sansho pepper
About
Yuki Mori
Yuki trained in Kyoto under a kaiseki chef for six years before returning to her home kitchen in Portland. She started Kanso Kitchen as a weekly email to friends, sharing one recipe each Sunday. That email became a blog, then a cookbook, and now a small shop of tools she actually uses every day. She still cooks on a single burner most mornings.
Her cookbook, “Five or Fewer,” was published in 2023 and has been translated into nine languages. She teaches seasonal cooking workshops at her Portland studio each quarter and believes the best meals are the ones you make without thinking too hard.
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