おやこ どんぶり Oyako Donburi

Welcome back! Today I present to you an easy Donburi. If you are new to Japanese cooking, Donburi means rice bowl dish. Donburi's can be made with chicken, meats, or fish. For today I offer you an easy chicken donburi made with simple ingredients you can find pretty much anywhere. Now as we have stated in the very beginning of this blog , this is not my original creation or am I trying to deprive anyone of making money. My intention is to show you my cooking experience and how you can easily follow along to make both traditional Japanese meals or easy to make Japanese inspired meals. Wakarimasu ka? Okay then!

Now that I have my usual disclaimer out of the way let’s get cooking. よい? はじめましょお!

So let’s go over what we’ll need:

1/2 lb chicken breast - or more
4 eggs
4 dried Shitake Mushrooms – or more!
1 onion
¼ cup Water
1tsp Sugar
3tsp Mirin
4 tsp of Soy Sauce
Rice
Garnish - みつば - Optional

So the first thing you’ll want to do is unpack those dried shitake mushrooms and soak them in water. Soak them for no less than ten minutes. If there are any stems cut them off.

You’ll later slice the mushrooms in half before you are ready to use them.

Next, take your chicken breasts and slice them diagonally and then into to bite sized pieces. And then return them to the refrigerator until ready to use.
At this early stage you’ll also want to slice up your onion into thin slices. Now don’t be shy! You’ll want those onions in there. Trust me!

Depending on how much food you plan to make you may need to add an additional egg or two.
 
But if it’s just for two then stick with the program and beat four eggs together until they are ready for use.
 
 
 
 
So now if you have your chicken, mushrooms, and oinions sliced, you are almost ready to go. But first you'll need to mix your simmering sauce. I had made this Donburi before from Yukio Moriyama's book Japanese Cuisine. But as I have discovered there is always a slight deviation from her recipie when I am cooking. Sometimes, I stray from the measurements and just eyeball it to my taste. I think many people do this and in most cases it's ok. But if you are not sure of your cooking abilities then for the time being stick with the recipie.
 
So if you are ready to make your simmiring sauce, mix together 1.4 cup of water into a bowl. Do not go over a 1/4 cup as I ususally tend to do or you will end up having to drain the water midway during cooking. This can skew your results so try to avoid this. Mix your water together with the soy sauce, mirin, and no more than that tsp of sugar.
 

Next, pour your simmiring sauce into a good sized skillet and bring to a boil. Once boiling add in your chicken, onions, and mushrooms. Cook them until the chicken appears done and the onions tender.
 
This should take about 2-3 minutes.
 
 
 
 
 

 
If your chicken, onion, mushroom mix appears ready, pour the beaten eggs into the mix and cover for around one minute.
 

The optional part of the recipie calls for a garnish to be added in. The Japanese recipie uses a garnish called mitsuba but if you can not find mitsuba any regular garnish in small amounts will do. This is mostly done for presentation. This is of course entirely optional.
 
 
 
 
 
If you have your rice already cooked then you can serve up the contents of your skillet. Place rice into a bowl then place the chicken & egg mix over the rice. If you have any left over simmering sauce left over you can pour a small amount to sweeten your donburi. This makes for an easy meal suitable for lunch or a light dinner. Not to mention it is relatively inexpensive to make. And you know that's always a plus! So please come again! I hope you enjoy this recipie. Enjoy!
 

Omusubi Update!

Yokoso! It’s been a little over four months since I started this little cooking blog. Up until now I have had a small stream of visits here and there. But last month’s post on Omusubi evidently was a big hit. So big in less than two weeks time I have over 1000 visits even surpassing my American Mishima writing blog. Even bigger yet that I am appearing on Google's first listings for Omusubi. Well what can I say? So far so good and no complaints! Whew! I had previously mentioned that my Omusubi went over big at the Shinkendo Dojo among the Real Japanese and to my relief it was also a hit at the Buddhist Temple. Boy was I relieved! So with that I would like to take a moment out to thank everyone for visiting my little page. ども ありがとう ございます! いってらっしゃい =)