Oyakodon (Japanese Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl)
Cuisine: Japanese
Region: 東京都
Servings: 2人分
Oyakodon (Japanese Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl) is a home-style staple dish. Ingredients and step-by-step instructions are below, with notes for home cooking.
Ingredients
- 1 chicken thigh (about 250 g)
- 1/2 tsp soy sauce (for marinating)
- 1/2 tsp sake (for marinating)
- 1/2 onion (100 g)
- 3 eggs
- 4–5 sprigs mitsuba (Japanese parsley)
- 120 ml dashi
- 1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 1/2 tbsp mirin
- 2 tsp sugar
- 2 bowls hot cooked rice (about 400 g)
Steps
- Trim excess fat and sinew from the chicken and, holding the knife at a low angle, slice it into 2–3 cm pieces. Rub in the soy sauce and sake and leave for 5 minutes.
- Halve the onion lengthwise and slice thinly along the grain, 5 mm wide; cut the mitsuba into 2 cm lengths. Crack the eggs into a bowl and stir just 5 or 6 times with chopsticks, cutting through the whites. The yolks and whites should not be fully blended.
- Put the dashi, soy sauce, mirin and sugar in a small frying pan (or an oyakodon pan) over medium heat. When it boils, add the onion and simmer for 2 minutes.
- Lay in the chicken without overlapping and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, turning occasionally, until cooked through. The liquid will reduce a little and smell sweet.
- While the liquid is bubbling, pour in two-thirds of the egg in a circle from the centre outward. Cover and cook over medium heat for about 30 seconds.
- Pour in the rest of the egg, scatter over the mitsuba, turn off the heat at once, cover and let it steam for 20 to 30 seconds. The surface should be soft and just set.
- Fill bowls with rice, tilt the pan and slide the topping onto the rice, then spoon over some of the sauce.
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Notes
Adding the egg in two goes gives you both firm and silky parts, for a contrast in texture.
Cooking one serving at a time makes it easier to slide neatly onto the rice. In that case halve all the ingredients.
A sprinkle of sansho pepper or shichimi chilli pepper sharpens the flavour, if you like.
If using chicken breast, dust it lightly with starch before simmering so it doesn't toughen.
Origin and history
Oyakodon is a rice bowl of chicken and onion simmered in dashi, soy sauce and mirin, bound with egg and served over rice. It uses both chicken and egg, the "parent" (oya) and the "child" (ko), hence the name.
There are various theories about its origin. In Tokyo, the story goes that in the mid-Meiji era, at a gamecock hot-pot restaurant in Ningyocho, Nihonbashi, some customers finished their chicken sukiyaki by binding the leftover meat and sauce with egg and eating it with rice. This was called oyako-ni (parent-and-child simmer).
Around 1891 (Meiji 24), the proprietress of the restaurant put oyako-ni over rice as a dish of its own and sold it as a delivery item. It became popular among merchants in Nihonbashi and Kabutocho and is said to have spread nationwide. Today it is a home staple, made with onion or green onion and with the egg cooked to taste.