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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/No-Suggestion4226 on 2023-07-01 05:17:22+00:00.

Cooking is one of my favorite hobbies, and one of my favorite cuisines is Japanese. I don’t have kids (and honestly don’t particularly like them lol), but my brother and sister-in-law have a nine-year-old girl. Once every three or four months she comes over to my apartment for a “sleepover.” Usually we’ll get something to eat, watch TV, play with my cat, and then go to the aquarium or something before I drop her back off at my brother’s trailer the next day.

Lately she’s been getting into anime, so we came up with the idea to make a reasonably authentic Japanese meal together. This was the menu:

  • Tuna tataki with homemade tataki sauce
  • Blanched bok choy seasoned simply with salt, sesame oil, and sesame seeds
  • White rice
  • Ajitsuke tamago
  • Suimono
  • Tsukemono (aokappa specifically)
  • Sencha

I prepared the ajitsuke tamago the day before (since they have to marinate for 24 hours), and I used store-bought aokappa (since ain’t nobody got time for that), but we made everything else from scratch together. Here’s the thing: my suimono recipe is pretty simple and includes kombu/katsuobushi dashi, salt, soy sauce, mirin, sake, green onions, wakame, and mushrooms. We had a good time, but apparently when my niece got home, she told her parents that she “had alcohol.” And now my sister-in-law is pissy because I gave her child alcohol even though I use ONE TABLESPOON of sake per batch of suimono (16 ounces, so two servings). The girl literally consumed half a tablespoon of sake. That’s not enough to matter at all.

My brother sees my perspective but is asking me to apologize just to get this to blow over, but I don’t think I should have to. It’s not my fault that his wife is uncultured and doesn’t understand that a small amount of sake is integral to the flavor of suimono. I so badly want to be like, “Fine, next time I’ll give her frozen chicken nuggets and Kraft macaroni and cheese. I’m sure she’ll be used to that,” but I know better than to make the situation even worse. But AITA if I refuse to apologize?