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The story
A cooking novice’s complaint that stir-fried vegetables and pork miso soup keep turning out greasy — despite using only a small amount of oil — drew a wave of responses on 5ch’s Nyusoku VIP board.
Posters offered a stream of practical advice: measure oil precisely with a measuring spoon, don’t crank the heat too high, blot excess oil with paper towels. Partway through, the thread even veered into a lively price comparison between rice oil and canola oil.
What people said
and my pork miso soup turns out greasy too.
If I don't, it burns/sticks to the pan though…
So you're saying I should cut back on the oil even more?
Adding ingredients before the oil's properly heated is also why it gets greasy/sticky.
I add the oil while heating the pan, and once it's melted I swirl it around the pan,
then cook the meat and add the vegetables.
A teaspoon of salt is the kind of amount that makes you nervous, like "is it really okay to add this much? Isn't that too much?"
But a teaspoon of oil makes you nervous the opposite way — "wait, that's it? There's no way that's enough!"
Getting the measurements right really matters.
Your heat's too high.
For stir-fried vegetables, low-to-medium heat is plenty.
So the idea is: use as little oil as possible and keep the heat low?
That doesn't apply if you're using a really crappy pan.
All I can afford is scrap-cut pork… pork belly's expensive…
If so, you can go easy on the oil.
What's that, mahjong?
Just a cheap pan, like 1,000 to 2,000 yen.
It warps and becomes useless pretty fast.
Re: #22
So blotting up as much oil as possible with a paper towel makes it less greasy?
And less greasy tastes better, right?
If you're using pork, the fat renders out of the meat anyway — without it, well, a little oil is barely even necessary.
So you're saying it's better not to add any oil at all?
And buy a non-stick pan.
You go that far, huh…
Like wiping the oil off with a paper towel after cooking the meat?
I only put in a little, but it still comes out greasy…
How much is "a little," exactly?
For a meat-and-veggie stir-fry, even 15cc (about a tablespoon) is more than enough for two servings — some people use way less than that.
The rest comes from the fat the meat itself renders.
That's about all I'm putting in though…
but a cheap pan is probably Teflon-coated.
You should use less than the recipe calls for.
It's just a cheap pan from the supermarket.
Using it daily, it warps out of shape within a few months.
Teflon coating peels off if you dry-heat the pan (heat it empty).
What I always do: turn on the heat, add the oil,
once the oil's heated through, swirl it around the pan and add the meat,
once there's no more pink, add the vegetables and turn the heat down,
once the vegetables are cooked through, add salt and pepper, dump on some shichimi (Japanese seven-spice chili pepper), and it's done.
Rice oil's great, right?
If it's cheap, maybe I'll give it a try.
But rice oil runs close to 900 yen for the same amount, doesn't it?
Well, different stores probably carry different brands, so hard to say.
With 700 yen you could buy a beef sirloin steak instead lolololololol
My memory was pretty off.
On the left, canola oil, 800g for about 200 yen — that was such an insane bargain I had to buy it lol.
On the right, rice oil, 1300g for probably around 900 yen — and I think that's still on the cheap side for rice oil.
Personally I'd just buy regular vegetable oil (salad oil) and get a beef sirloin steak with the difference lolol
Background and Key Points
I barely used any oil, so why is it greasy? — some background: “salad oil” (サラダ油) is Japan’s generic term for neutral vegetable/canola oil, sold in nearly every household in large plastic bottles, and used by the tablespoon or teaspoon in everyday stir-fries. Teflon-coated frying pans in the 1,000–2,000 yen range are the default starter pan sold at Japanese supermarkets and home centers; they’re known to warp and lose their coating within months of regular use, which is a running joke in the thread. Pork belly (豚バラ) is prized in Japanese cooking specifically for its fat content, while “off-cut” or scrap pork (切り落とし) is the cheaper, leaner alternative many budget cooks reach for instead — a distinction that matters because rendered pork fat, not added oil, is what several posters identified as the real source of the greasiness.
The thread’s actual disagreement wasn’t about whether oil causes grease — everyone agreed on that — but about where the line for “a little” actually sits. Several posters insisted the original poster’s idea of a small amount was still objectively too much by experienced-cook standards, while the poster kept pushing back, asking incredulously whether a teaspoon or even less was really the expected amount.
What outside readers are likely to miss: the debate over pan quality was tangled up with income-level implicit references, cheap pans are consistent with cheap cuts of pork, and neither is a personal failing so much as a shared, unspoken class marker on Japanese message boards. Also worth knowing: the closing detour comparing canola oil and rice oil prices, joking that the price difference could instead buy beef sirloin, is a stock 5ch comedic beat about frugality rather than a serious nutritional argument.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nyusoku VIP) thread “I’m new to cooking but everything comes out greasy — what do I do?“
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