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What convenience store foods taste best when seared? Japanese lighter company finds out

Master Blaster Apr 12, 2025
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If you can eat it, you can sear it.

When dining at Japanese restaurants, you may come across an item described as “aburi” which is the Japanese word for seared, in that it was briefly exposed to a strong flame. This can caramelize desserts or give a smoky tinge to meats, bringing different flavors and textures to well-known foods.

It’s even easy to do at home if you have the right tools, such as the Aburi-shi (“Searing Master”) by Lightech. These disposable burner lighters sell for 550 yen (US$4) and instantly let you torch your favorite dishes with ease. This opens the door to a whole range of foods one wouldn’t think of searing, such as convenience store fare.

So, Lightech gathered a bunch of items from Family Mart, Lawson, and 7-Eleven, put them all under fire, and ranked the top three.

In third place was Sweet Red Bean Paste and Butter French Bread from Lawson. As you might imagine, this small baguette filled with sweet bean paste and butter benefits greatly from a little toasting. The bean paste is delightfully warmed and the butter melts into the crevices of the bread for an even more flavorful snack.

The second-best convenience store item to blaze up is the Spam Musubi with Three Kinds of Cheese from Family Mart. It’s like making a grilled cheese sandwich out of a rice ball with a variety of gooey cheese and fragrant, golden-brown surface.

And the best item from a major convenience store chain to sear was found to be Chilled & Moist Baumkuchen from Family Mart. Here the sugary outer surface is caramelized to give it a crispy texture and bittersweet notes. It even looks more appetizing when seared, but don’t eat it too fast because it gets pretty hot this way.

Fans of 7-Eleven might be disappointed that none of their items cracked the Top 3, but Lightech also ranked each store’s items individually so we can still see what’s best among their offerings.

In third place was the Whipped Cream and Sweet Bean Paste Dorayaki, although the picture Lightech provided shows a fish-shaped taiyaki. I’m not sure if they made a mistake with the name or the picture, but I’m sure either one would taste rather nice with a dose of fire.

In second place was the chain’s Sweet Potato Flavored Yokan dessert and taking top honors was Salmon Sushi, which makes perfect sense since aburi salmon is a popular dish at a lot of revolving sushi restaurants.

Family Mart’s Top 3 should come as no surprise since we already saw two of them. Rounding out their elite offerings is their Aromatic Grilled Dried Squid, which apparently is even better when grilled again.

And while the French bread with bean and butter is best at Lawson, we can see that it was followed by their Browned Corn and Mayonnaise bread when browned a little more in second place and their Tricolored Dango mochi dumplings in third.

They also made a video of the overall Top 10 items, showing the searing in action. Strangely, the dorayaki and taiyaki are both shown and since it doesn’t mention what store they came from, the mystery lingers about which one is 7-Eleven’s third. It’s probably the dorayaki though.

Of course, taste is a subjective thing, so your favorite seared convenience store food might not even be on this list. Personally, I’m thinking a cinnamon bun would turn out pretty nice this way. But the only way to find out for sure is to put the fun back into burning food by getting yourself an Aburi-shi at your nearest fire dealer today.

Source, images: PR Times
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[ Read in Japanese ]