Donburi Series – Oyakodon (Chicken & Egg Rice Bowl)

Oyakodon is a one pan dish where onions, chicken and egg are simmered in a rich dashi-based sauce. It is then poured over a bowl of steamed white rice. It is simple, delicious and comforting and it’s ready in less than 30 minutes!

Oyakodon literally means “parent and child” bowl. It’s a classic Japanese dish that uses chicken and egg together in this rice bowl. It’s a comfort food staple that reminds most Japanese of the mother’s home cooking

INGREDIENTS TO MAKE OYAKODON.

• Chicken. I’m using chicken thigh for this dish. As there is no added oil to cook Oyakodon, using thigh leads to a more juicier and tender chicken meat. As for the chicken skin, it can be cooked with or without. If you want to use chicken breast, reduce the cooking time to keep the chicken breast moist.
• Egg. Use fresh eggs, as in the final dish, the egg is somewhat only 80% cooked so keeping it fresh makes it tasty. Use 1 or 2 eggs, your choice.
• Onions. Yellow onions are sweeter than red so use it if possible. If you can find sweet white onion, they would be even better. The onions impart sweetness to the dish so it’s best not to omit it.
• Dashi, Mirin, Sake, Soy sauce. These ingredients make the broth for this dish. It’s important to use dashi rather than just water. Dashi is a stock made from kombu and dried bonito flakes hence it has a rich umami flavour. You can make your own dashi or use dashi stock powder with water. If you cannot consume sake, use more mirin.. The broth gets cooked down quite a bit so the alcohol content would have been burnt off.

HOW TO MAKE OYAKODON

• Usually Oyakodon is cooked by portion. So use a small pan that fits, about 8″ / 20cm pan. If the pan is too large, the broth gets evaporated quickly and you end up with no sauce.
• Cooking onions in broth. By cooking onions in broth first, it softens the onion and brings out the sweetness into the broth.
• Add Chicken. Add chicken into the broth and let it simmer for about 7 minutes with the lid covered. You may need to open the lid to turn over the chicken to make sure both sides are evenly cooked.
• Remove lid and bring the heat up. Crack eggs in a small bowl, lightly mix it
• Drizzle egg over the top of chicken making sure it’s evenly distributed. Gently jiggle pan to make sure egg is spread out. Let it cook for 2 minutes or till egg is almost cooked but still slightly runny.
• Prepare rice in a bowl. Slide chicken and egg broth over the rice. Garnish with spring onion, shichimi togarashi and seaweed strips.

Did you try this dish?

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