Oyakodon

This is one of my favorite Japanese dishes of all time -- oyakodon, which literally means "mother and child donburi" which is essentially a chicken and egg rice bowl.

The dish varies from restaurant to restaurant, and some of the super authentic Japanese restaurants will even refuse to serve this since it is supposedly an easy dish meant for the staff, not a menu item to be served to guests. Anyway I first tried and fell in love with the oyakodon from Chopstix in Clairemont Mesa (San Diego). I've tried oyakodon at many other places henceforth and have not found one that comes close. Sometimes the flavor of the sauce will be off, or the rice won't be as good, or they'll throw in random shiitake or other some other item that overpowers the dish. Not only that, but usually places charge more for and give you less than what you would be able to get and pay for at Chopstix.

The closest thing I found to replicating the Chopstix oyakodon is to make it by using this oyakodon sauce, which one may be able to find at a Japanese super market. I have tried it once by making the sauce from scratch but I don't make Japanese food often enough to justify having a whole bottle of mirin sitting around, or a whole bottle of dashi. This sauce I found runs at about $3 per bottle and is one of few (or possibly the only one) without MSG.

Anyway  I didn't do half as good of a job at making the dish look pretty though. I thnk technically you're supposed to put the raw egg on top as the dish finishes cooking, and because it's so hot, the egg will cook. I just threw in the eggs and stirred everything around, and plus I threw in spinach just for kicks. So it doesn't look as good but it sure was satisfying.