Japanese Beef Rice Bowl With Egg • Gyudon

Here’s a nice light meal, Gyudon (Meat Bowl) or Gyūmeshi (Meat Rice) is a traditional Japanese dish, as the name implies, it’s a bowl of rice with meat on top. This dish has gained greater relevance in Japan due to several franchise restaurants that more or less only make this dish, even though there are lots of variations, the reason is simple: it’s a filling and delicious dish that can be made and served quickly, a kind of Japanese-style fast food.

For this recipe you’ll need some traditional Japanese ingredients, such as Dashi (fish stock, usually albacore tuna), which is sometimes hard to come by and comes in sachet form with powder that you dissolve in water, so here for 120ml you need 2 sachets, Sake (Japanese Rice Wine) this is easier to come by and it’s going to be cooked rather than drinking it, so you don’t need to buy an expensive one, you can also often find it in smaller bottles, Mirin (Japanese Sweet Rice Wine) this can be harder to come by, but nowadays supermarkets tend to have small bottles, Konbu seaweed (a type of dried seaweed that is very common in Japan and sold in large packets) is also a little difficult to get hold of, it’s not edible either, it’s just used to give more umami to broths and rice and finally of course some good Soy Sauce (Soy Sauce is, as the name implies, a fermented soy sauce), this is very easy to get hold of, just choose a good brand, many supermarket brands are a bit too watery, just check the ingredients, if it has 4 ingredients (water, soy, wheat and salt) you are on a good path if it has more than that then they are adding stuff, things like vinegar, sugar, fructose, glicose, melaces, colorings, spices, extracts, acidity balancers, herbs, yeasts, some of these “soy sauces” have soy sauce has their 3rd or 4th ingredients… sad, good soy sauce should have a very dark color, with some thickness and of course a very salty umami taste.

When you make it at home it takes a little longer, but once you have the meat cooked in the broth you can serve it immediately, later on or the next day, as soon as you have the meat ready the rest is just added spices, rice, a poached egg and that’s it, in Japan you go into a Gyudon restaurant and usually order on a machine that gives you a ticket or on a small computer screen that sends your order straight away, usually when you are sitting down, after 1 minute you already have the dish in front of you, its as fast as poaching the egg.

It usually takes longer to make the choices on these restaurants than to be served, even though it’s a simple dish these restaurants always include more extras, ingredients, portion sizes and variations, such as typical starters like Gyoza, Tempura or salads, one of the most common variations is instead of the bowl with rice and the meat on top, you get a separate bowl of rice, a bowl of meat and a bowl with an egg, the idea is to whisk the egg, then pass some of the meat through the egg and eat with the rice separately… yum! So lets get cracking on the recipe!

Japanese Beef Rice Bowl With Egg • Gyudon

Servings: 2
Time: 1hr 30mins
Difficulty: Normal
Rating: ★★★★★
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Homemade Japanese gyudon is a comforting rice bowl dish featuring tender, thinly sliced beef simmered in a savory-sweet sauce made from soy sauce, mirin, and dashi. Topped with onions and often served with a poached or soft-boiled egg, it's a delicious and satisfying meal that's easy to prepare at home.

Ingredients

Rice – 300gr (Japanese Short Grain or Sushi)
Water – 330ml
Kombu Seaweed – 1 Piece (Optional)
Beef – 350gr (One piece of veal)
Onion – 1 Large
Chives – 6 sprigs
Dashi – 120ml
Sake – 1 Tablespoon
Mirin – 2 Tablespoons
Sugar – 1 Tablespoon
Soy Sauce – 2 Tablespoons
Vegetable Oil – One Tablespoon
Eggs – 2 (To be poached, optional)
Vinegar – One Tablespoon (For the Eggs, Optional)

Directions

When buying the beef, choose a piece that is tall and not too lean. The meat will be tender either way because it is cut very thinly, but you also want some of the beef fat do dissolve in the sauce.

To cut the meat, I recommend freezing it and then letting it defrost 1 hour before cutting it, so it won’t be completely frozen but it will still be very firm so you can cut very thin slices, the thinner the better, if you can find a butcher who cuts thin slices in a ham shop, that’s even better, this is common in some countries like italy.
Leave the meat aside and prepare the rice, start by rinsing it, cover the rice with water in a bowl and stir well, drain the water, repeat 6 more times until the rice water is transparent, then leave the rice to rest for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, pour the rice into a rice cooker or a pan, add 330ml of water and a square of kombu seaweed, cover and put on the heat, when it starts to boil (you’ll hear the noise) and let it cook for about 5 minutes.

After those 5 minutes, turn the heat down to a simmer and let it cook for another 10 minutes, then remove from the heat and leave it covered for another 10 minutes before opening the lid and it’s ready to serve (you can fluff it a bit before serving so it has a better mouth feel).

Peel and slice the onion into thin half moons, add the onion to the frying pan with a drizzle of vegetable oil, let it caramelize a little and become transparent and tender.

Then add the meat and the sugar, let the meat cook and get a good browning color (these are extremely thin slices so it will be pretty fast).

Then add the dashi, sake, mirin and soy sauce, turn the heat down to low and cook slowly, covered, for about 3 minutes to simmer, then remove from the heat.
Finally prepare the poached egg in a small saucepan with very hot water (but not rolling boiling) and a dash of vinegar, each person has their own technique, I usually put a large metal serving spoon in the water, then break the egg into the serving spoon with a little of the very hot water, let the egg settle and only then, let it join the rest of the water, so the egg whites stay around the egg, let the egg cook for 1, maximum 2 minutes and that’s it.
Put the rice in the bottom of a bowl, followed by the meat with the sauce and finally the poached egg with a little chopped chives on top, perfection! enjoy 🙂

Notes: This is the standard gyudon recipe note that both the rice and the egg have been cooked without salt, the idea here is that the broth, being slightly salty and intense, is compensated for by the slight lack of salt in the rice and egg, rice in Japan tends to always be made without salt or very little, only sushi rice is salted. Another variation on this recipe is to add 2 or 3 whisked eggs when the meat is ready and let them cook for a while in the broth with the meat (i guess a variation on katsu-don). They are also usually served with pickled ginger on the side so you can add as much as you like.

This recipe for Japanese Beef Rice Bowl With Egg • Gyudon was originally created on BakeAfter.com. Esta receita de Gyudon Refogado de Bife com Arroz Japonês foi publicada em português no Iguaria.com.