Japanese recipes often call for sake. For someone outside Japan, that raises an obvious question: does this mean ordinary drinking sake, or is there a special product called cooking sake? At first, the answer seems simple. Regular Japanese sake can usually be used in cooking, but that is only part of the story. In Japan, some products are brewed specifically for cooking. They are not necessarily cheaper versions of drinking sake; their fermentation and flavor balance may be designed from the beginning for what happens after the sake goes into a pan. Other products contain salt and are sold as ...
