The Ultimate Oyakodon
Difficulty: Easy2 to 3
servings15
minutes20
minutesA few things to note for this parent-and-child (oyako) rice bowl (don). First, brown your chicken thigh cubes. The browned bits add more flavour and besides, boiled, grey chicken cubes do not look appealing. Even worse, boiled cubes of breast meat. Let's just stick to skin-on, coloured dark meat, shall we? Next, make sure you add your eggs in two batches. This provides more textural contrast in your dish. At the bottom, the eggs that are more "Set", and at the top, a layer of eggs that are slightly less cooked from being the second addition. You could use 4 eggs but I'm insatiable, so 6 it is...
Ingredients
500g chicken thighs, skin-on, boneless, chopped into chunks
150ml dashi (I usually just make dashi from the dashi bags, but powder or from scratch works too)
80ml mirin
20ml sake
50ml light soy sauce
Half yellow onion, sliced
4 to 6 eggs, lightly whisked
Spring onions
Cooked Japanese rice, to serve
Oil, to sear the chicken
Directions
- Heat your pan up over low heat, drizzle in about a Tablespoon of oil. Lay the chicken thigh chunks in an even layer, skin-side down. If your pan is small, you may need to do this in two batches.
- Let the chicken skin slowly render and brown, about 8 to 10 minutes. Once the chicken skin is browned, set the chicken aside. At this point, it doesn't need to be fully cooked. (Don't worry we'll finish cooking this later on).
- In a bowl, mix the dashi, mirin, sake and light soy together.
- In the same pan you used to sear your chicken, add your sliced onions along with the dashi-sauce mixture from the previous stepped. Allow to simmer for 2 minutes, before adding your chicken chunks back into the pan, along with any juices that have accumulated.
- Let the entire thing simmer for about 5 to 10 minutes, until the chicken is fully cooked through.
- While that's happening, get your bowls of rice ready.
- Add about 2/3rds of your lightly whisked eggs over the chicken mixture. Sprinkle over your spring onions. Let the eggs cook and fluff up over low heat.
- When the first round of eggs are almost all cooked, add in the remaining egg mixture.
- The top of the eggs should be slightly runny, so make sure not to overcook them! Once everything looks done to your liking, switch off the heat, and spoon everything over your rice bowls.
- Serve with more spring onions, seaweed, or a sprinkle of schichimi togarashi.
About Me
