Emma Basic

Emma Basic is the range to know for everyday Japanese cooking at honest prices. The idea behind the brand is simple: the building blocks of a Japanese kitchen — rice, miso, seaweed, noodles, breadcrumbs and seasonings — done properly, without the premium packaging markup.

The cupboard staples are all here. Emma Basic sushi rice and short grain Japonica rice cook up glossy and properly sticky, ready for sushi, onigiri or an everyday rice bowl. The miso comes in a generous one-kilogram tub that will see you through months of soup. Nori sheets, wakame seaweed, furikake rice seasoning and panko breadcrumbs round out the essentials, and there are soba and udon noodles for quick midweek bowls.

Two products deserve a special mention: the gluten-free, reduced-salt soy sauce, which is genuinely useful for anyone cooking for coeliac guests, and the dashi soy sauce, a ready-blended seasoning that shortcuts a dozen Japanese recipes.

Emma Basic sits alongside our bigger Japanese brands as the sensible everyday option, and it is sent from our Manchester store with UK delivery. Free delivery applies on orders over £75, so it is easy to stock the whole cupboard in one go — rice, miso, nori and noodles together will get most households there without trying.