Quick Oyakodon

2024-08-01

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 chicken breast or thigh
• 1/4 onion
• 1 scallion
• 1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tbsp mirin
• 5 tbsp dashi stock (you can find powder packets at Asian convenience stores)
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup white rice, cooked

Prep

Step 1: Chicken, Scallion, and Onion

Cut up your chicken into bite-sized chunks, around a quarter to half the size of a McNugget.

Finely slice your scallion. Cut your onion whichever way you prefer; I like to have larger chunks of onion, so I won't dice them. Instead, I'll slice my onion into little half-moon slivers.

Step 2: Dashi Stock

Pour your dashi stock, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar into a pan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

Add your chicken and onion into the same pan and cook until the chicken is about halfway done. Make sure to flip the chicken so it cooks evenly.

Step 3: Eggs and Assembly

Lightly beat your eggs; there's no need to completely mix the whites and yolks. Add the sliced scallion to the chicken and dashi mixture, and pour the eggs over it. Cover the mixture and let the eggs cook to your desired consistency, don't mix any further!

Remove the eggs when they have reached your desired level of doneness, and drape it over your rice.

Epilogue

In 2017, like many UBC students, I rented a basement of a house close to campus with roomates. This rental unit was tiny, there was one full-size bedroom, and a "bedroom" that was really more of a den — all you could really fit in there was a twin-size bed and a dresser. Since there were three of us, we sectioned off part of the common area (the "living room") as a sleeping area; and that's the story of how I slept on a sofa couch for a year. I'm not sure if the rental was actually legal, but the housing market in Vancouver was (and still is) insane, and I was happy to get a place that was a 20 minute bus ride away from campus, no transfers.

My roommates and I would spend our Sunday evenings meal-prepping. We were by no means great chefs, one of us set off the fire alarm while frying bacon. Our choice of meals to prep for the week ranged from simple meals that would last in the fridge and warm up well (like pasta) to mistakes (I would not inflict week-old salsa and taco filling on my worst enemy).

I was on an internship semester at the time, and had a bunch more free time than either of my roommates, one was a first-year medical student and the other was in a particularly hellish semester of their computer science major. So one week, it fell to me to make that week's meal prep — this oyakodon was what I'd ended up making. It turned out to be a hit, and became a to-go recipe for me, whenever I need a quick bite.