This Izakaya staple is salty and fatty, fresh and minty, a little sour, and crispy as hell. Best served with mayonnaise, lemon, and a refreshing beverage!
Shiso good to me!
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I don’t often tell stories about my recipes, but since this one is extra niche, I want to explain how I found it. In the summer of 2025, I rented an apartment in Waseda, Tokyo for two months. For the entire time, I was still more in sync with Central European Time, and often went out for dinner after midnight.
Luckily, a handful of Izakayas was just a few blocks away, many of them open until 3 AM or later. The one that I visited most frequently had an extensive English menu, which also featured sardines fried in a dough that contained shiso. It was the one indispensable item I ordered every time – that and a ginger highball.
Craving it back home, I looked around for an online recipe and found this similar one by Cooking With Dog. It included umeboshi, which I don’t really like in isolation, but it really works for me in this context.
About the ingredients
The hardest part about this recipe is probably procuring its ingredients. Kewpie mayonnaise and umeboshi should be fairly easy to find in Asian grocery stores across the globe, but if you can’t find any, substitute it with whatever generic mayonnaise you have. Umeboshi is a tad less widespread, just skip it altogether if you can’t find it. However, I recommend adding half a teaspoon of salt to the batter in that case, as the dish otherwise misses some kick.
A dirty job
It seems like sardines are either sold whole (fresh or frozen) or processed in some way. At least in my neck of the woods, I was unable to find prepared sardine fillets au naturel. All of them were submerged in oil, often with additional spices for a ready-made meal. This means that you’ll have to behead and gut a few whole fish. It’s not difficult, but it is a fairly smelly and bloody activity. If you’re not ready for that, feel free to sub the sardines with meat, tofu, or some less labor-intensive fish.
If you got frozen sardines, make sure to defrost them safely: Either slowly in the fridge, which takes about 8 hours, or inside a leak-proof bag filled with cold tap water, which only takes about 20 minutes. Thawing at room temperature air is a health hazard!
Unbeleafable growth
Similarly, I’m not sure how to obtain shiso in most parts of the world – outside of growing it yourself. The good news is that, as a member of the mint family, it’s very easy to grow and care for, whether in a pot or in your garden. Once established, it will supply you with more leaves than you’ll know what to do with. It needs very little sun and can be kept alive over winter if you move it inside. If you plant it outside, be aware that it self-seeds heavily, and its offspring will often grow nearby in the following season. Infinite shiso glitch!
Some quick maths
For two servings, you need 16 shiso leaves, one per piece of fish. Each of the 4 sardines yields 2 fillets, which you cut in half again, making 16 portions. You apply 4 chopped umeboshi and some Kewpie mayonnaise to those pieces and then wrap each one into a leaf.
This dish works as a snack alongside other Izakaya-style dishes (or finger food), but also as a standalone meal. The amounts indicated below assume the latter; around 8 pieces per person are surprisingly filling even without any sides.
Recipe credit
Like most of my recipes, I started this one out by basing it largely on an existing one, specifically the Cooking With Dog recipe. I’ve since practiced it many times, made changes to the ingredients and steps (sometimes very few, sometimes many), and written up as much additional advice as I could based on my own experience.
As mentioned above, I had this dish on many a summer night in 2025 at an Izakaya in my neighborhood called 呑兵衛 江戸川橋店, right by Edogawabashi station.
Shiso-Wrapped Sardines
Equipment
- 1 Thermometer to measure the oil's temperature
- 1 spider skimmer or similar for removing the wraps from the oil
- 1 freezer bag for thawing sardines (optional)
- 1 fine-mesh strainer for sprinkling flour (optional)
- 1-2 ice cubes for the cold water (optional)
Ingredients
For the wraps
- 4 whole sardines
- 4 umeboshi
- 16 shiso leaves fresh
- 2 lemon slices
- Kewpie mayonnaise
- 250 g vegetable fat or 250 ml neutral oil
For the batter
- 65 g all-purpose flour plus a little more for dusting
- 14 g starch corn or potato
- 120 ml ice-cold water
Instructions
Prepare the fish
- If using frozen sardines, take them out of the freezer 20-30 minutes ahead of time. Fill a freezer bag with cold water and thaw the fish inside, closing it fully.
- Take out the sardines and fillet them. There are plenty of video tutorials for this online that will give you a better idea than my description ever could.
- Remove the pits from the umeboshi, then finely mince them.
- Evenly spoon the minced umeboshi on the sardine fillets.
- Add a line of Kewpie mayonnaise on top, running from one end to the other.
- Flatten and even out the toppings using a small spoon.
- Now cut each fillet in half using a sharp knife. You should have 8 pieces of fish per serving.
Assemble the rolls
- Lay out your fresh shiso leaves on a large surface.
- Put one piece of fish on each leaf (see picture above).
- Wrap the leaf around. Place the wraps on the seam side so they don't unroll.
- Sprinkle some all-purpose flour on the wraps using a fine-mesh sieve. Turn them around twice to cover both sides, ending with the seam side down again.
Prepare deep-frying
- Pre-heat your oven to ~75°C to keep your finished batches warm later.
- Heat up a small or mid-sized, heavy-set pan over high heat on the stove.
- Add the vegetable fat (or oil) and let it heat up to about 170° C.
- Meanwhile, put the ice-cold water into a medium-sized bowl. Ideally add an ice cube or two to keep it cold (deduct them from the weight).
- Add the all-purpose flour and starch to the bowl and mix. If not using umeboshi, add 0.25 tsp of salt per serving to the batter.
Deep-fry
- Repeat the following step for each batch. Do not overcrowd the pan, the wraps should not touch each other.
- Once the oil reaches 170°C, try to keep it there throughout the following steps.
- Dip a wrap into the batter, briefly shake off excess, then carefully transfer it to the oil.
- Repeat with each wrap of the batch.
- Deep-fry for about 6 minutes. After 1-2 minutes, start occasionally flipping the wraps. They should be lightly brown and super crispy when done.
- Remove the batch from the pan, shake off excess oil.
- Transfer it to a tray lined with paper towels and move it into the warm oven.
- Repeat for your remaining batches.
- Serve with some lemon slices and Kewpie mayo for dipping.
