Oyako-Don: The Perfect Combination

Oyako-don, roughly translated is parent and child rice bowl. If you think too much into it, maybe, it can seem a bit unappetizing. However, that is quite the contrary and the dish is a perfect paring of sautéed chicken and eggs. Why wouldn’t a parent and child be a perfect pair, right? Wait, don’t answer that. Anyways, if you want to find out how they can be the perfect combination, check out my recipe below.

This dish is extremely simple and can be a starter course to tackling other similar dishes, such as katsu-don.

Ingredients

1/2 c dashi

1/2 c soy sauce

1/4 c mirin

1/4 c sake

1 tbs sugar

1/2 c water

1/2 white onion

1/2 chicken thigh

2 eggs

1/4 c green onion

So to start, slice 1/2 of a white onion and cut the chicken thigh in to bite sized pieces. You can mix the dashi, soy sauce, mirin, sake, water and sugar in a bowl. You will use half of that mixture at the beginning of the cooking process and half at the end.

Cooking at a medium heat, add one half of the soy sauce mixture, onions and chicken to a fry pan. You will need to let this simmer until the chicken cooks. While the chicken and onions simmer, whisk the two eggs lightly in a separate bowl. You can also thinly slice the green onion at this time. You will use them later for plating.

Once the chicken has cooked, add the whisked eggs and the other half of the soy sauce mixture. Turn the heat down to low and top the pan with a lid or piece of foil. You don’t necessarily want the eggs to completely cook and you don’t want scrambled eggs so do not mix them.

When the eggs harden but are still slightly runny remove from the heat. You will have wanted to place your freshly made rice in to a bowl for plating by then. Let the chicken and eggs slowly glide off of the fry pan on to the bowl of rice. I imagine it to look like a figure skating move. Or a slow motion rendition of my 2 year old falling off of the couch and on to his stuffed animals on the floor. Anyways, we are almost done, yay!

Traditionally this dish has mitsuba or a plant that is similar to parsley. I add green onion, only because it is readily and easily available. Again, this dish is super simple, tasty and the basic soy sauce mixture is something you see throughout Japanese cooking. If you don’t want to bother with the soy sauce mixture you can use mentsuyu which is easily found at any Asian grocery and is a soup stock for noodle dishes. Pair with miso soup, and a salad or sautéed vegetable dish.

Have fun with this dish and try to see what else you can add to make it your own. As always お召し上がれ!

Here is my YouTube video showing how I made it:

https://youtu.be/PL3_vmm58OE

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