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RECIPE Oyakodon Donburi

By Colin and Mitch in Japan, Recipes, VTSub on 6th November 2023.

Oyakodon is a hug in a bowl – the ultimate in Japanese comfort food. Donburi are rice bowls topped with meat, fish, vegetables and other delicious ingredients. Oyakodon is a special type of donburi, which means ‘mother and child’. This is because the main components are chicken and egg! It’s an easy dish to make at home, so here is our recipe for oyakodon.

The great thing about oyakodon is that it is a simmered dish – no frying is needed. It’s also a one pot dish, where (apart from the rice) everything is cooked in the same pan. It has a lovely complex flavour – umami from the dashi (stock), salty from the soy sauce and sweet as well, a great combination.

There are specialist oyakodon restaurants in Japan – the dish is cheap and popular and, of course, delicious.

The base of okyakodon is dashi, a Japanese stock usually made from kombu (kelp seaweed), bonito flakes (shaved fish flakes) or shiitake mushrooms. The ingredients are simmered in water for several minutes and then removed leaving a clear stock full of umami flavour. Dashi forms the basis of many Japanese soups including its famous miso soup.

We have a recipe for dashi here. But if you don’t have time (or ingredients) to make dashi you can buy dashi powder online or at Asian supermarkets. It is possible to make oyakodon without dashi and still get bags of flavour. If you can’t find the powder or don’t want to use dashi, chicken stock or a stock cube will add excellent flavour.

We always use chicken thigh meat to make oyakodon as it has loads more flavour than chicken breast. Interestingly, while chicken breast meat is more expensive than thigh meat in the UK, it’s the other way round in Japan. Chicken thighs are considered to be the best meat for this dish. However, if you prefer chicken breast it’s absolutely fine to use that instead – the flavour of the broth is fantastic and because you are simmering the meat, it won’t go dry but will remain tender and juicy.

Oyakodon Equipment and Pans

If you go to an oyakodon restaurant in Japan they have special pots to cook the food in for individual portions which means that you get the omelette perfectly balanced atop the chicken.

But if you’re cooking at home for more than one person, and are serving different portions from the same pot it’s a bit more difficult to get the fluffy omelette on top. But however you present the food, it is still guaranteed to taste delicious! We tend to use as small a saucepan as we can get the ingredients into – that is with the smallest diameter – in order to get the egg to rest on top.

We have a rice cooker which is absolutely brilliant for cooking rice. Add rice and water (twice as much as the rice by volume), pop on the lid, press the switch and it will cook the rice perfectly, automatically switching itself to a keep warm function. If you don’t have a rice cooker you can cook the rice in a saucepan – same ratio, just let the rice simmer until all the water has absorbed.

Recipe Oyakodon: Ingredients

2 chicken thighs per person

1 onion

100ml dashi (if you can’t get dashi use chicken stock)

1 tbs soy sauce

1 tbs mirin (If you can’t get mirin, use cooking sake. If you can’t get cooking sake use white wine. Whatever substitute you use, add an extra teaspoon of sugar.)

1 tsp sugar

2 eggs

Rice – about 100g per person

2 spring onions (green onions) to serve

Method

Start cooking your rice. We use sushi rice as it has a nice texture. We put it in a rice cooker but you can use a pan on the stove. The ratio for both methods to use is 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water. Cook until all the water is absorbed.

Chop up the chicken into bite-sized pieces. Slice the onion into thin slices.

Make the dashi or stock and add the soy sauce, mirin and sugar. Put into the smallest diameter pan you have (it needs to be deep enough to accommodate all the ingredients). Bring to a boil. When the liquid is simmering add the raw chicken. Stir it around to make sure each piece can cook.

Allow the chicken to simmer for about 5 minutes.

Add the onion on top and simmer further for about 10 minutes.

Let everything simmer until the rice is cooked.

Beat the eggs gently in a bowl.

At last minute pour the egg slowly on top of the chicken and onions. Turn the heat off and let the eggs cook for a couple of minutes in the residual heat.

Place the rice in a bowl.

Then slide the chicken, egg and any broth on top. This is the tricky part. You can buy special donburi pans which can cook an individual portion that glides neatly onto the rice bowl. But in a practical kitchen, when you are cooking one dish for more than one person and using a standard saucepan, it’s a bit trickier to produce multiple portions without the egg breaking up. So, you may not be able to get the perfect presentation but the finished result will still taste utterly delicious.