Gyudon (Japanese Beef Bowl)

When I was a poor college student, one of my favorite places to eat is Yoshinoya, the Japanese fast-food chain specializing in rice bowls, or donburi. If you have tried Yoshinoya, you will know that gyudon, or simmered beef with onion served on top of a bowl of warm steamed rice is their signature dish. As a starving student, gyudon was my perfect meal and I enjoyed eating it. The beef bowl has pretty much launched the Yoshinoya restaurant empire, now with over 1,400 locations in Japan and the world!

Gyudon (??) is a popular dish in Japan. Packed in bento boxes, disposable styrofoam bowl or plastic boxes, gyudon can be can be found pretty much anywhere in Japan: train stations, food section at supermarkets, or local convenient stores such as 7-Eleven. It’s also a homey dish that many Japanese home cooks prepare at home. The reason is simple: gyudon is delicious and makes a filling meal. The cooking method of gyudon is very similar to sukiyaki donburi, a recipe that I have shared a couple of months ago. With gyudon, it’s actually easier, with easy-to-find everyday ingredients, but the taste is equally tantalizing.

When I first started learning about Japanese cooking, my Japanese friend told me that there are four key ingredients in Japanese cuisine: soy sauce, mirin, sake, and dashi (bonito and kelp stock). She also told me to get a good dashi-based soy sauce or soup base. She said that once I have mastered the harmony of these four key ingredients, I would have mastered basic Japanese recipes. She is absolutely right. Nowsdays, I never run out of my Mizkan Honteri Mirin and Mizkan (Bonito Flavored) Soup Base.

I find gyudon especially hearty and satisfying during the cold fall/winter months. Make a big batch of steamed rice and the simmered beef. When you are ready for dinner, scoop a generous portion of the beef on top of the rice and let the simmered sauce absorbed into the rice. Everyone has a Japanese beef bowl in their hands as they eagerly shovel the beef, onion and rice into their mouth. For the adventurous eater, crack a raw egg on top of the gyudon. If you have leftover, pack it into a bento for your loved ones the next morning.

Gyudon makes a happy meal in my family. Try my gyudon recipe and I hope your family will enjoy it, too.

(Click Page 2 for the Gyudon (Japanese Beef Bowl) Recipe)

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Japanese Beef and Rice Bowl (Gyudon)

This Japanese Beef and Rice Bowl that I first made two years ago in San Francisco continues to be a standby weeknight dish. It’s a very simple recipe with a delicious sauce using sake, mirin, sesame oil, and soy sauce. In this updated recipe, the sauce has been improved, with a better consistency and deeper sesame flavor. And the leftovers taste just as good, if not better!

Excuse me for a second, while I rhapsodize about fast food in Asia.

As frequent travelers know, the #1 cardinal sin when visiting a new place is eating at fast food chains (unless you are in a developing country and just need a clean public restroom.) I have had bad luck when breaking this rule. Food poisoning from a Beijing KFC, for example. I have also had good luck. On one of those painfully humid summer mornings in Shanghai, I escaped into an air-conditioned McDonald’s and discovered the joys of Sichuan-spiced chicken sandwiches.

Then there is my relationship with Yoshinoya. I can’t speak for the quality of Yoshinoya’s chains in the US (one in NYC, the rest mainly in around LA). But while living in Beijing and Shanghai, every couple of weeks I would succumb to my immense craving for their beef bowl, or gyudon. Even if it meant eating in a dingy mall basement with ambient arcade noises, alongside mega hoards of teens.

While Yoshinoya China’s beef bowl paled in comparison to anything in Japan, it was my guilty pleasure. The succulent paper-thin fatty beef and onions doused in in a soy sauce-mirin mixture, with all the flavor dripping down to coat the rice, was hard to resist. And it was less than $2.

Honestly, I really should have made this more at home and enjoyed my surroundings more. Gyudon’s incredibly easy, as long as you’re able to find fatty cuts of beef and slice it very thinly against the grain (or have the butcher do it for you). Tender cuts with a lot of marbling are ideal. The sauce is just soy sauce, mirin, and sake. Some cooks will replace the sake with water. I like to add a few teaspoons of sesame oil for a deeper flavor.

And while Yoshinoya is the most ubiquitous purveyor of gyudon, my favorite chain version actually comes from Mos Burger, which has outlets around Japan and SE Asia. Their “Yakiniku Rice Burger” is basically gyudon deconstructed and reassembled, with the rice acting as buns. It’s tiny, exactly 3 mouths of beefy bliss.

But replicating rice burgers at home is a bit harder.

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Japanese Beef and Rice Bowl – Gyudon

Serves 4

1 tablespoon vegetable oil1 large onion, thinly sliced1 pound marbled beef such as skirt steak, thinly sliced against the grain2 tablespoons mirin2 tablespoons sake1/3 cup soy sauce3 teaspoons sesame oil1 teaspoon white sesame seedsPrepare the rice as you normally would in a rice cooker or pot while you prepare the beef.In a large sauté pan, heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Sauté the onions until soft, about 3 minutes. Push the onions to the side of the pan and add the beef to the middle. Sauté the beef for 1 to 2 minutes, until the red is mostly gone.Add the mirin and sake and stir for 1 or 2 minutes while the alcohol lifts up the nice brown bits from the pan. Add the soy sauce and sesame oil and let simmer until sauce is reduced by half, about 5 minutes.Serve hot over the rice and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

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More delicious beef recipes to try:

Tagged as: Beef, Japanese, Recipes

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