Sunday, June 18, 2006

Beef over Rice

So, I’m three bites into the recipe requiring the onions and onion-like vegetables mentioned below, and I’ve already decided three things:

1) It’s too hot to eat, so I’m going to blog a bit while it cools.
2) The recipe calls for a little too much onion.
3) It’s still delicious.

Here’s the recipe, followed by my suggestions for improving it:

Ingredients:
2 cups dashi (you can use hon-dashi – the powdered stuff if you don’t know how to make dashi – it’s a bit of a pain)
1/4 cup sake
1 medium yellow onion, peeled, halved, and cut into thin crescents
1 Tokyo negi or small leek, with roots and rough portion of the top cut off, cleaned, rinsed, and cut diagonally into thin slices
3 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon fine-ground sea salt
1 teaspoon mirin
1/2 pound very thinly sliced beef fillet (about 1/8 inch thick) or ground beef
6 cups hot cooked rice
1 scallion, with roots and rough portion of the top cut off, cleaned, rinsed, and cut into thin slices

Instructions.
1) Place the dashi and sake in a medium saucepan over high heat. Add the onion and Tokyo negi (or leek) and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the vegetables are tender, about five minutes. Stir in the soy sauce, sugar, salt, and mirin. Add the beef and simmer until it is just cooked through, about forty seconds.
2) Fill four bowls with 1 1/2 cups of rice each and ladle even portions of the beef mixture over the top. Garnish each serving with a sprinkling of scallion.

Serves four.

My recommendations:
1) Reduce the amount of leek and onion by about 25%.
2) Don’t use ground beef. Since the beef is cooked in the mixture instead of being cooked separately and drained, all the fat stays with the meal. I used ultra-lean cube steak which was easy to slice, and it worked well.
3) Also, feel free to reduce the amount of beef. A quarter pound might be too little, but as it’s just for flavoring and not the focus of the meal (the rice flavored by the sauce is the best part), you shouldn’t need any more than four tenths of a pound.
4) I’m not fond of raw scallion, so I added that along with the beef to take the edge off the flavor.

この ごはんは とても おいしい です。

22 comments:

Wendy C. said...

ooooh! Sounds so good!!! When's dinner?

Spider Girl said...

Y'know, that sounds very yummy.

Unknown said...

It's against my religion to eat beef which makes it so much more tastier...

Stacy The Peanut Queen said...

What time is dinner?

I'll bring the sake! ;)

Blondie... said...

That actually sounds so yummy! I'm not a big fan so all the extra onions but it does make flavors stand out.

Thanks for sharing!

((I can't help but giggle at SJ's comment...))

Grant said...

wendy - around 7:00. Bring me a Nihon no usagi. =)

spider girl - it was. The flavored rice under the beef was the best part.

sj - tasty and blasphemous - who could ask for more?

pq - there's already sake in the meal. You can also bring me a Nigon no usagi.

blondie - yeah, cut back on the onions and it should be okay. The rice is the main portion of the meal.

Monogram Queen said...

It sounds SO good but I am too damn lazy to make it. *sigh* I need a ninja male bunny chef!

Anonymous said...

That sounds good.I'd need to go shopping for ingredients to make it though.

PBS said...

Wow, you're quite the cook! I might even try it but without much meat. I've seen dashi but what is mirin? If you've explained it before, I must have missed it (or forgot, one or the other.)

What is the secret message on the bottom of your post?

Grant said...

patti_cake - two steps and it's too much for you? I take it the American fast food industry is much in your debt. :p

hellbunny - what? You don't have dashi and mirin already at home?

pbs - mirin is sweet Japanese cooking wine. And there is no secret message - it's out there for everyone to see. Basically it just means this meal is delicious.

xwy said...

I'm starting to see a pattern here. Basically, in any instance where we would normally send a present or bring a gift for the host....we should just resort to bringing you a young, hot asian chick. Cool. From now on when I have dinner guests I'm going to ask them to bring me a young, hot Italian stud instead of a bottle of wine. I wonder how you say that in Italian???

Kira said...

I like raw scallion, so that one isn't a problem for me. However, after reading the ingredients and the preparation, I am all with you on not using ground beef. Maybe I could try this one down at Alex's. Either that or I have to buy another bottle of mirin :P (the bottle is at his house along with the tamago pan as that's where I make it typically...).

Anonymous said...

Actually I don't eat much fastfood, the hubs cooks for me! He won't do japanese though. :(

Monogram Queen said...

Whoops that last comment was me!

Joe said...

On a random note, I came across some cheescloth yesterday whilst doing some cleaning and I thought "I wonder if Grant was ever able to find some of this stuff."

Anonymous said...

please continue to show that guys can and should cook. i am too lazy to cook, so i'm gonna marry a internationally acclaimed chef.

The Stiltwalker said...

give me a recipe for shark steak and koku rice...

Melissa said...

You are about to become the J. Julia Childs.

Grant said...

angie - I can't help you with Italian, but the next time you're in the airport, see who comes running when you call for all Nihon no chiisai usagi.

kira - having had it as leftovers for a few days, I think I can recommend cutting way back on the ingredients. Also, even that ultra-lean cube steak had a little fat, so it would definitely be greasy (which is just not right for J-food) if you used regular ground beef.

patti_cake - get a divorce. :p

joe - no, but I quit looking. I decided any recipe that required cheesecloth was too ambitious for me.

fatty - have I mentioned that I'm an internationally acclaimed chef, famous the world over except for in Australia? Wolfgang Puck gets tips from me all the time. :p

stiltwalker - okay: get some shark and that rice you mentioned, put them in a blender, add however much Maker's Mark you need to be able to stomach this recipe, and voila! You're drunk and probably sick to your stomach.

melissa - or her Asian equivalent, Juria.

xwy said...

Probably a very confused J rabbit farmer ;)

The Stiltwalker said...

well damn. what am I going to do with a concoction like that? damn Grant I thought you were of a helping type spirit.

Anonymous said...

not good enough coz i live in australia, and in australia i'll stay till the USA breaks into civil war and we get inundated with the refugees. Then i'll move to Russia.