A dish made with chicken, eggs, onions, sake and mirin

Oyakodon is a Japanese dish consisting of chicken and onions simmered in a dashi broth with eggs lusciously and carelessly drizzled over the whole mixture. The eggs should be silky smooth and the chicken tender and juicy. It is also called the “Parent and child” donburi (donburi = a sort of Japanese rice dish in a bowl) for obvious reasons; the egg and the chicken.

My brother loves this dish and always orders it at restaurants but it is pretty easy to make once you’ve gotten the hang of it. I tend to mess this recipe up when cooking for many people but it’s easy cooking for one or two people at a time. It’s healthy, no frying or oil in sight, thus no stinking up the kitchen (or my hair =D) while cooking. And it’s got eggs and onions, my favourite combination!

It’s the ultimate Japanese comfort food for me.

Cooking for 1-2 pax:

Ingredients

1. 2 Eggs (3 if you’re cooking for 2)
2. 1/2 a green onion, sliced
3. 1 Chicken thigh deboned and cut into bite sized pieces, skin on (1 Chicken thigh per person)
4. Dashi, I use the bottled one
5. Sake
6. Mirin
7. Light soy sauce
8. Sugar
9. Some sliced Japanese leeks for topping

Cooking the Oyakodon

1. Your rice must be already cooked and warm as you will ladle the chicken and egg mixture directly on top of the rice.
2. Crack your eggs into a separate bowl. Use a chopstick to break up the egg whites so that they separate easily. Gently break the yolk and give it a stir so its slightly mixed but not incorporated with the whites When you pour in the eggs to cook you want to have some distinct white pieces and yellow bits from the eggs. Don’t scramble the eggs.
3. Get a small saucepan ready, it shouldn’t be too big as we want the dashi/sake mixture to cover half of the onions and chicken.
4. Add about 3/4 cup of dashi and 1/4 cup of water to the saucepan. Taste your dashi sauce before cooking. You may want to make fresh dashi from scratch, by all means do but I’m too lazy! This brand of dashi that I’m using already has soy sauce in it so it’s salty.
5. Add 3 capfuls each of mirin and sake and half a tablespoon of sugar. Taste the mixture and adjust dashi, sugar or water content. Remember it has to be a bit salty as it will form the sauce for your rice. I forgot about that at one time and made the dashi mixture nice on its own but too bland when put together on the rice.
6. Heat up the dashi on medium high heat and add onions. Again remember that the dashi mixture has to cover up to half of the chicken and onions. Cover until onions are slightly translucent.
7. Add chicken bits evenly throughout the pan and try to avoid overcrowding. Cover for 1 minute. Uncover and turn the chicken chunks over to cook on the other side. Cover for 1 more minute.
8. At this point, pour half of the eggs in the bowl over the chicken and onions. Make sure the eggs are evenly distributed throughout the pan. Cover for 10 seconds til partially cooked but still runny. You could cook it further if you prefer your eggs cooked through. Pour the rest of the eggs evenly into the pan. Switch to high heat for 1-2 seconds and turn off the heat, covering entire mixture, and let stand for half a minute.
9. Ladle your rice into a bowl and spoon the chicken and egg mixture on top carefully so as to keep the shape of the eggs chunky and silky.
10. Top the whole bowl with shreds or slice of raw Japanese leek which lends a crunchy accent and spicy punch to this sweetish savoury chicken dish.