Oyakodonburi: The Parent & Child rice bowl dish

If you look up oyakodonburi (おやこどんぶり） in any internet translator, its going to spit back out parent and child rice dish or something to that effect.  Oya=parent and ko=child.  This play on words applies to this particular dish, a chicken and egg over rice bowl.  Its great for those cold nights because its got a little broth to go over the rice and served piping hot straight off the frying pan.  Plus its cheap fast eats too.

I’ve been hankering to give this recipe a try for the past few weeks but a busy schedule and lots of leftovers have prevented me from doing this until tonight.  This particular recipe is based off a YouTube video that was sent to me by the Digital Katnapper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMJY29QMewQ&feature=channel_page.  I thought it was kinda weird at first with the dog sitting there but I guess that’s just the gimmick.

Since this recipe is technically a single serving recipe, I just eyeballed most of my ingredients, being careful to control the sweet content (sugar and mirin).  Too sweet and you can’t eat as much.

Serves One

Ingredients:
1/5 US cup dashi soup
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tbsp sake
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp mirin
1/2 small onion, sliced in 1/4″ slices
3 oz chicken, sliced into one inch bite sized pieces
2 eggs, whisked
10 mitsuba (Japanese wild parsley), sliced into 1″ sections
7 oz rice (1 serving’s worth, preferably fresh and hot)

Directions:
I used granulated dashi and water to make the dashi soup.  Mix that up, add the soy sauce, sake, sugar, and mirin.  Stir the soup a little bit and pour it into a frying pan, turn the heat to medium.

When the soup starts heating up with bubbles, and this will happen quickly, add the onions.  Cover with a lid and let it simmer for about 2-3 minutes to soften the onions.  Take the lid off and add the chicken.  Replace the lid and let it simmer a bit, then turn the chicken over to cook the other side.  Cook the chicken through.

The video shows the eggs being only slightly beaten to maintain a light and fluffy texture.  I’m not sure if that works because I whisked mines thoroughly before pouring 2/3rds of it over the pan and stirring it lightly to let the egg get between the onions and chicken.  Don’t get too overenthusiastic with the stirring or the eggs won’t set as well.  Cover with the lid for about 10 seconds then pour the rest of the raw egg over the entire dish.

If you have it, add the mitsuba and cover the pan with the lid.  I couldn’t be bothered to make a special trip to the Japanese supermarket to pick up mitsuba so I did without.  Turn off the heat and let the dish sit for about 15 seconds.  If you can manage it, slide the goods ontop of your rice.  Me, I couldn’t quite slide, so I loosened with chopsticks and arranged it as nicely as possible in the bowl.    Admire your work, and now dig in while its piping hot.

In retrospect, after I finished my dinner, I think the presence of mitsuba was probably needed to cut the richness of the dish.  But then again, I didn’t eat a lot of rice with it.