While prison grub generally gets a bad rap, inmates at a penitentiary in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, look forward to chow time, thanks to Keiko Kuroyanagi.

Like other cooks on the outside, Kuroyanagi tries to ensure that her meals are delicious, visually appealing and nutritionally balanced, even on a meager budget.

The managerial dietician has an added incentive: the meals will help inmates prepare for their eventual return to society.

As a technical officer with the Justice Ministry, Kuroyanagi, 54, has worked at the prison for male inmates with mental issues since 2012.

Her experiences on the job were detailed in a book, “Mezase Mushoran Mitsuboshi” (Aim for three stars among prisons), which was published by Asahi Shimbun Publishing Inc. last year.

"Musho" is short for "keimusho," which means prison in Japanese. And "Mushoran" is a pun on Michelin, a French tire company that publishes the Michelin Guide, which awards stars to gourmet restaurants.

“I am hoping that my book offers readers a glimpse into inmates’ endeavors trying to make a fresh start in life through meals they are served at the prison,” Kuroyanagi said.

Before taking on her present post, Kuroyanagi had worked at hospitals and homes for the elderly in need of special assistance.

Her responsibility at the facility is to decide on the menu and coach prisoners in the cooking duties. 

There are 20 managerial dieticians who are posted to juvenile detention centers and correctional facilities across the nation, according to the ministry.

At a penitentiary, it is customary for some prisoners to be assigned to kitchen duties as part of their prison work.

At the Okazaki facility, many of the inmates have no or limited experience in cooking.

Kitchen staff divide the work. For example, some are assigned to cook deep-fried dishes and others something else.

They prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner for a total of 110 inmates.

Teaching them how to cook was a challenge, Kuroyanagi recalled, in getting the kitchen staff to understand the lingo.

The inmates were not even familiar with such a common cooking term as “hitahita,” which describes pouring in just enough liquid to cover the ingredients.

When asked to "cool boiled potatoes" in making a potato salad, they cooled the boiled potatoes in cold water rather than draining the hot water from the pot and letting them cool in the air.

The result was that the potato salad turned out watery.

The book also explains rules unique to the prison system: sweet cooking sake and cooking sake are forbidden for use to prevent unauthorized drinking by inmates. 

Sharp objects such as skewer sticks and toothpicks are not allowed because they can be weaponized.

In prison meals, rice cooked with barley is often a staple.

The amount of a single serving of the mixed rice and calories of a meal varies from one inmate to the next based on individuals’ workloads and their height.

The overriding principle in the prison, like in society, is “equality.”

A meal that appears slightly larger than others is a no-no since it is a potential source of friction among inmates.

Portions of Japanese fried chicken are carefully selected to match equally in size.

In cooking happosai, a Chinese dish containing many ingredients, quail eggs are usually a fixture.

But they are excluded from prison happosai because serving the same number of eggs to each inmate is a laborious undertaking.

An additional challenge is that the budget for three meals a day is only about 520 yen ($3.30) per prisoner, according to the book.

Kuroyanagi tries to stay within the limit by using emergency canned bread approaching its best if used by date and through other cost-saving efforts.

But she said she would make no compromises as far as the look, flavor and nutritional balance of the meals are concerned.

“Tasty meals will contribute to the stability of minds,” she said. “I get inspired for creating new recipes when some inmates comment about dishes they found delicious.”

The book contains nine recipes used by the Okazaki facility, including a doughnut made from soy pulp with cocoa or matcha flavor, and lemon-flavored fried squid, which was adopted from a school lunch menu in Aichi Prefecture.

Prison meals have been long known as “smelly meals” due in part to the use of old rice that is cooked with barley.

Kuroyanagi said she set out to change this longstanding stereotype.

Under her guidance, some prisoners developed a passion for cooking and eventually obtained a cooking license.

The cooking license exam has been offered at the Okazaki facility since fiscal 2022.

Such an approach is spreading to other correctional facilities as a deterrence against recidivism, and Kuroyanagi is fully supportive of the effort.

“If prisoners are released holding a license of some sort, they would feel more confident about themselves when they return to society,” she said.