Sweet and salty, gyudon is thinly sliced beef cooked with softened onion slices in a mixture of dashi, sake, mirin and soy sauce, and served over rice. We like to add eggs and scallions.
Cook’s notes
“Gyu” is Japanese for beef and “don” is the bowl it is served in. Gyudon is a donburi dish so that means ladling the hot beef over newly cooked rice.
Egg is not an indispensable component of the dish. But we do like the addition. If you do too, there are many ways you can cook the eggs for your gyudon. You may poach it, boil it, or even crack it in the pan with the beef during the last few minutes of cooking. If you’re confident with the source of your eggs, you may even top the gyudon with a raw egg yolk.
As for the beef dish itself, there are only two ingredients that needs prepping. The first is onions which need to be peeled and thinly sliced.
The second is beef. You’ll need a tender cut of beef. Definitely not brisket or anything that requires long and slow cooking. The beef should be sliced thinly, no more than an eighth of an inch, and you’ll want to cut the thin sliced into strips.
Bearing those two things in mind, it’s fairly easy to cook gyudon. This is a 15-minute dish. That’s five minutes to soften the onion slices in hot oil plus ten minutes to cook the beef with the softened onion just long enough for both to soak up the seasonings.
Japanese beef rice bowl (gyudon)
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons cooking oil
- 2 large onions peeled and thinly sliced
- 500 grams thinly sliced beef (about one pound) cut into strips
- ¼ cup dashi
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- ¼ cup sake
- ¼ cup mirin
- ¼ cup sliced scallions to serve
- 3 cooked eggs to serve
Instructions
- Heat the cooking oil in a frying pan.
- Add the onion slices to the hot oil and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until softened and just beginning to caramelize.
- Turn up the heat to high, add the beef to the onion slices and stir to break up any clumps. Cook just until the meat is no longer pink.
- Pour in the soy sauce, mirin, sake and dashi, and stir.
- Turn down the heat to medium and cook, uncovered with occasional stirring, until the sauce has reduced to about two tablespoonfuls.
- Scoop rice into bowls, ladle the gyudon over the rice, arrange the eggs on the side and sprinkle with scallions.
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