Beef Bowl

I just found the most wonderful Japanese food blog:japanesefoodaddict.com. It's got the simplest/best Japanese food. I've been searching for somewhere with good Japanese food, food I'll actually eat that don't all for rice vinegar and mirin, etc. Because I'm not gonna go buy these. But this website is perfect. All I need is stuff I already have: soy sauce, soup stock, sugar, etc.

I'm going to be posting the recipes in full with notes of what I substituted/left out. I hope you enjoy!

Gyudon (Beef with Rice)

from japanesefoodaddict.com
Yield: 2 servings
Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
-2 bowls of steamed rice
-0.4lb of sliced beef
-1 medium onion (sliced)
-1 tsp hon-dashi (soup stock powder)
-6 tsp soy sauce
-4 tsp sake
-4 tsp sugar
-1 tsp granted ginger

Preparation
1. Add hon-dashi and sliced onion in 2 cups of hot water in the saucepan
2. After the water boils, cook for 6 minutes on medium heat
3. Add mixed spices (soy sauce, sake, sugar, ginger) and beef in the saucepan and cook on high heat.
4. Reduce heat to medium and after it boils cover and simmer for 10 minutes
5. Serve it a bowl of steamed rice with soup in the saucepan

NB:
- This is possibly the easiest thing I've made. It took no time and I didn't have to hover over it.
- Go read my Rice in a Pot post if you don't have a rice cooker!
- For the beef, I used beef stir-fry.
- I used regular soup stock cubes, don't worry about it being hon-dashi.
- Instead of grating ginger, I used 1 tsp powdered ginger.
- I didn't even use sake.
- Seriously this taste perfect!

Cooking Sausage

I have a constant problem cooking sausage. I don't know why, but it's annoying! They're either undercooked or burnt or too tough. So I found that this method works best.

Ingredients:
- Sausage (I almost always freeze mine and this recipe works fine on frozen)
- Olive oil

How to:
1- Lightly coat the pan with olive oil and set to medium heat.
2- Once hot, place the sausages in the pan. Brown each side (about a minute per).
3- Reduce heat to low, add about a half cup of water and cover.
4- Let cook for 10-15 minutes or to desired tenderness, rotating the sausages half way through. The water content should go down as well.
5- I cut mine in half to see if it's done.

Psuedo-Japanese Food

I’m half Japanese. And yes, I grew up eating with chop sticks and I ate rice at least 3 times a week. I have a rice cooker in college and when I studied in London I learned how to cook rice in a pot (which is hard, people!) Anyway, the point is I crave/need Japanese food about once a week. So I have been experimenting with easy ways to make my fave Japanese foods.

Katsu-don (yes, that’s a real word. It’s basically fried pork cutlets with rice)

Ingredients:
-2 pork cutlets
-Panko bread crumbs (you can use regular bread crumbs, but these are the best!)
-1 egg (I use the egg white, but you can use the whole egg)
-½ cup of flour
-Oil for frying
-Rice

Instructions:
1.Make Rice! Put it in a rice cooker. Or look at my instructions for rice in a pot.
2.Heat up oil in a skillet.
3.Set up your dredging station: Place the egg, flour, and Panko on individual plates. Then dredge: cover the pork in flour, then egg, then Panko.
4.Fry those suckers up! They should be crisp and golden. Yum!
5.This is the ghetto part: Put the rice in a bowl, then place the pork on top. Use soy sauce for flavor. You can add Rice Sprinkles (Furikake), miso soup, seaweed salad, whatever. That’s it!

Fake Oyako-don (Oyako is the characters for parent and child, in this case referring to the pairings of egg and chicken)

Ingredients:
-Chicken (I used rotisserie chicken, but you can use leftover chicken or bother to make your own)
-1 egg (or 2 if you want)
-Onions
-Soy sauce
-Oil
-Rice

Instructions:
1.Once again, make rice!
2.Heat up oil in a skillet.
3.Slice however many onions you want (the onions are traditionally in slivers).
4.Sauté the onions, then add the egg (I personally scramble it in a separate skillet, but you can cook it in the same pan), and add the chicken (this is mainly to heat it up). Add soy sauce for flavor.
5.Add on top of the rice. That’s it!

NB: Both these donburis (Japanese for rice bowls) have their own special sauce, like oh so many Japanese dishes. So by just using soy sauce it’s still the idea without taking up much time.