Oyakodon

Oyakodon is my favorite among the donburi -- Japanese ricebowl dishes -- except when Unagidon is. Katsudon is pretty much always second runner-up, but I digress. In Japanese it is written "親子丼", and the characters mean "parents", "child", and "bowl", which is a little creepy unless you know that the primary ingredients in oyakodon are chicken, eggs, and a bigass bowl of rice. Oyakodon is Japanese home cookin', a wintery comfort food. It's tasty, hot, and filling (to say the least).

Ingredients

Except for the rice, which can obviously all be cooked in one big pot, the nature of oyakodon demands that each serving be prepared individually, so you'll need to have things more-or-less portioned out, depending on how anal you are about precision in your cooking. For each serving, you will need:

• 1 1/2 cups of hot cooked rice
• 1 cup of water 1/4t hon-dashi OR 1 cup prepared dashi stock
• 3T Light soy sauce (that's light brew, not LITE as in "low sodium")
• 2T Mirin
• 1T Sugar
• 1 Small white onion (about 1/2C when sliced)
• 2 boneless/skinless chicken thighs
• 2 eggs
• A little green onion

Preparation

I'm making 2 servings.

• Chop up a little green onion for garnish. Now slice the onion, very thinly. No, thinner than that. It only has a few minutes to go from raw to completely cooked, and it should not end up crunchy.
• Now cut the chicken into bite-size chunks
• I prefer to measure out and combine the soy sauce and mirin now, and have a little sugar ready.
• The rice just got done cooking, right?

Cooking

Now the rice is cooked, a large bowl stands ready for the completed dish, and the rest of the ingredients are prepped. For this step a small, shallow skillet with a curved lip is ideal because we're about to make a rather delicate (and wet) omelette, and scooping it out easily without splashing crap all over the place is good.

• Put the skillet on the cooktop and set the heat to medium-high
• Pour in 1C water and add 1/4t hon-dashi
• Add the soy sauce, mirin, and sugar
• Stir a bit to dissolve and distribute things
• Add the onion
• Wait for things to come to a boil
• Add the chicken

While the chicken is cooking, whip two eggs in a bowl, then go back to tending the chicken. When the chicken and onion are looking done:

• Pour whipped egg over chicken/onion/stock mixture
• Cover skillet
• Turn off heat
• Wait 2 minutes

While waiting on the egg to soft-set, spoon the rice into the big bowl.

Once the two minutes are up, carefully spoon/scoot/whatever the delicate glob of egg, chicken, and onion onto the top of the rice, and scoop out any straggling bits of chicken and onion. It's both good and proper for the cooking liquid to seep into the rice but you may wish to be careful about trying not to dump it all in there unless you like your oyakodon on the soupy side. When I've had this dish in pubs, there's been just enough broth in the bowl to just barely puddle at the bottom, but it's traditional home cookin', which means whatever makes you happy is the right thing to do.

Now sprinkle on a bit of green onion and eat!