How to make GYU-DON (Japanese Beef Bowl) 〜牛丼〜 | easy Japanese home cooking

Welcome to Taj's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make Gyudon. So last four videos I made western influenced Japanese food. Now I'm going to go back to the more traditional Japanese food. But actually Gyudon is not that very old, it's kind of more of a recent recipe. It's only about 150 years old because before that we didn't have the tradition of eating beef. It's only after opening the country and then came the influence of the western culture where people ate beef and pork. Gyu means cow or beef and don is short for donburi. What it is is that you have a bowl of rice and on top of that you have different ingredients cooked in sauce. So the topping is very similar to sukiyaki and the sauce is pretty much the same as teriyaki. So if you like those you'll definitely like this. And it's quite very easy to make and requires very little ingredients so I hope you'll give this a try as well. Then let's get started. Here are the ingredients for Gyudon. Here I have thinly sliced beef meat, that's about 100 grams and that will be enough for one portion. Then I have a cup of rice, onion, sugar, soy sauce, sake, and mirin. If you don't have mirin or sake then you can make without them. They'll just give a little more authenticity, a little more depth to the flavor. Then let's start cooking. So the first thing we're going to do is prepare the rice. So I'm going to rinse the rice first and then you want to kind of rub the rice against each other like this without water so that you get rid of the kind of like the powdery part of the rice. You see how the water is clouded? We want to get rid of this. So I'm going to rub the rice one more time. And I'm going to leave like this for about a minute or so and let the water drain. So after about a minute when water has drained, you can see how clear the water is. I'm going to throw that away, put this back in the pot and then here I'm going to add some water. So usually when you cook rice you want to have 1 to 1.2 ratio of rice to water but today I'm making donburi dish so for that I want a little bit firmly cooked rice and so I'm going to make 1 to 1.1 ratio of rice to water. So in here I'm going to add a little bit over 1 cup of water. Just about 1 teaspoon more. And then we're going to let this sit for about an hour or so and let the rice soak in the water. So an hour has passed. As you can see the rice has soaked up the water and it's not see-through, it's white. And this is ready. So let's cook the rice. So in order to cook the Japanese rice, you want to first bring to boiling and cook with low heat for 10 minutes and then let it rest for 10 minutes and steam. And then we're going to do that. And if you want to see more detail of how to cook Japanese rice properly, please look my other video on that. So I'm going to turn the heat to high and then we're going to bring this to boil. So once this comes to boil, I'm going to give it a slight stir like this so that it'll be cooked evenly. I'm going to put the lid back on and then I'm going to turn the heat to simmer and then cook like this and simmer for 10 minutes. So 10 minutes has passed and then I'm going to turn the heat off and very important, don't open the lid at this moment. And now I'm going to let it sit and let it rest for 10 more minutes. And so what it's going to do is it's going to steam on its own. So we're going to wait 10 more minutes. While we're waiting on the rice to be cooked, let's prepare the onion. So here I have kind of like a medium, small size onion and I also like to put a lot of onion in this. So I'm going to use the whole thing. But if you have a whole onion, you might want to use just half of it. Then I'm going to slice this thinly. So this is finished. Now let's start making the gyudon topping. In a small pan or a pot, I'm going to put in half a cup of water and there's half a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of soy sauce, one tablespoon of mirin. If you don't have mirin, then you can add one teaspoon of sugar instead, and then one tablespoon of sake. If you don't have sake, then don't worry about it, you can make without it. And then here I'm going to add in the onion and then I'm going to turn the heat to high and bring this to boil. And once this has come to a boil, I'm going to turn the heat to medium and let this cook for about two minutes. So after cooking this for about two minutes, then you can see that the onion is cooked through. And then here I'm going to put in the sliced beef and then I'm going to turn the heat to high. So this has been cooking for about a minute or so and the beef has been cooked thoroughly. I'm going to turn the heat off. Now let's assemble with the rice. When you're using especially a wooden spatula like this, or this is actually bamboo, make sure you wet the spatula, otherwise the rice grain will stick on the spatula and it's hard to get them off. Now I'm going to make the rice a little bit more flat like this, and then here I'm going to put the topping. I'm going to put a little bit of beni shoga on the top as condiment. If you don't have this, it's totally fine. Then this is finished. Let's eat. Oh, this smells so good. I'm so hungry. Let's eat. Itadakimasu! Okay, let's eat. Oh, this looks so good. Itadakimasu. Mmm. A little bit of beni shoga. Itadakimasu. Mmm. Oh, it's so good. Oh, it's so amazing. So today I kind of used a little more lean beef, but if you have access to or if you can afford Wagyu beef with a lot of fat, those will taste much better. But nonetheless, this is also fine. And I actually asked the butcher to cut them thinly. It's not that thin, but if you can have the butcher that can cut really paper thin, then those actually taste much better. And eating donburi, it might be a little bit difficult to hold the rice with your chopstick. So if you have a difficult time eating donburi with chopstick, then you can eat donburi with spoon. A lot of Japanese do eat donburi with spoon as well. Mmm. So delicious. Mmm. Oh, the sauce is just so perfect. Mmm. And if you like it a little spicy, then you can add some chili to it. Or if you have shichimi togarashi, then that matches gyudon as well. Not too much. Just get a little kick to it. Itadakimasu. Mmm. Yeah, definitely. So adding a little chili to it to kind of change up the game, and I personally like it spicy, so I like this way better. Mmm. So delicious. Mmm. Oh, this is so perfect. I hope you're not bothered by the fact that I'm holding the bowl like this in my hand. This is the way we eat in Japan. But if you feel uncomfortable doing that, then you can just eat like this, of course. Not a problem. Mmm. Oh, that is so totally delicious. Such a perfect lunch. Gochisosamadeshita. Oh, that was so savory. So as you saw, making gyudon is actually quite easy, and you really don't need that much special ingredients. Like I said, you can skip meat in a socket, and then you have pretty much just regular ingredients. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you like what you saw, please do me a favor and hit that like button. That'll help me spread out this video to other people. And if you have any feedback, question, or request, please feel free to write anything in the comments below, or critique for that matter. I'm always open for that as well. Otherwise, I look forward to see you in the next video. Bye.