Saveur’s recipe comix: Oyakodon!

I love the hunt for food inspiration.  Years ago a wonderful REI co-worker introduced me to the food magazine Saveur.

One of the wonderful finds was recipe comix! In which I found this marvelous gem that keeps adapting to my every whim.

Oyakodon is a traditional Japanese meal that translates to “parent and child” reflecting using both chicken and egg in the same dish.

I’ve kept the theme of boiling chicken and onions in broth, soy, and white wine.  Then adding whipped eggs to lend a creaminess to the sauce.

After that though I’ve continued to be even more blasphemous than the original authors of Tiny Kitten Teeth.

I use italian style pasta as often as I use rice.  I always add some veggies so I feel I’ve created a balanced meal in one pan.

I hope you may be inspired by my most recent version: lemon ginger basil oyakodon. Below you can see my gathering of ingredients.  I usually have a box of white wine, but I also usually have some Mirin (small bottle from the asian aisle at Cub Foods) in the back of the fridge as well.  Sometimes I have homemade chicken stock, but another awesome fridge staple is the Better Than Bouillon stock bases.  In the July/August Cook’s Illustrated store bought chicken broth/stock brands were tasted and reviewed and this one came out on top both for flavor and value.

First I start whatever starch I’m going to serve with this.  In this case I put water on for pasta, but to be more traditional you could make rice.

I lightly boiled up my liquids in a sauce pan.  So the chicken broth, soy, white wine (in the box), and added sugar.  I’m not very precise with my measurements here.  I chopped the onion and tossed it in.  Chopped the ginger and added it along with the lemon.

Then I took a large hunk of chicken thigh (maybe 1.5 or 2 pounds?) chopped it up and stirred it in along with a sprinkle of chili flakes. While the chicken was cooking I chopped up a yellow bell pepper and green beans.  I tossed those in when the chicken was about done and covered the pan to cook the veggies.

Don’t forget about your pasta or rice!

While the veggies were cooking on medium high heat, I beat three eggs and chopped a substantial quantity of basil.  I stirred in the basil and then the eggs.  Turned off the burner and covered the pan to let the eggs cook slowly on residual heat.  I’d say it takes anywhere from 3-5ish minutes depending on how hot you had it to begin with.  If it wasn’t hot enough to begin with it never seems to cook.  If you cook the eggs with full heat or for too long they separate from the sauce and then you have scrambled eggs with a thin soy broth. I’ve found that quantities are not so important but heat and timing in this last step is more critical.

I toss in my noodles, but you could just spoon it over rice.

Yum 🙂

What inspires you to cook?