Oyakodon Recipe – Japanese Cooking 101 (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between oyakodon and donburi? ›

Donburi is simply the name for a rice-bowl meal. There are so many different types available in Japan, from the inexpensive gyudon (beef slices on rice) or oyakodon (a rice bowl topped with chicken cutlet and egg) to the more extravagant ones such as kaisendon (topped with fresh seafood).

There's another type of oyakodon too — if you put salmon and salmon roe (eggs) together, you get a seafood version called "kaisen oyakodon." There's also "kaikadon," where a different meat is mixed with egg — this is also called "tanindon" from the word "tanin," which means strangers.

A direct translation of oyakodon is parent and child rice bowl. It's a poetic nod to the fact that both chicken and egg are the star ingredients of this classic Japanese donburi recipe.

“Oya” means parent, “ko” means child and “don” is short for donburi which is a rice bowl. The name of the dish is a poetic reflection of the fact that chicken and egg are served over rice. (Chicken is the parent and the egg is the child.) The dish was first made at the Tamahide restaurant in Tokyo in 1891.

Homemade dashi is nice, but not necessary for this simple dish, which has so many other strong flavors.

Tamahide in Ningyocho was established in 1760, and is not only old, but also the birth place of a common Japanese dish called Oyakodon. It was introduced here in 1887 and it is still one of the best places to eat it in Japan. The current characteristic white restaurant building was built in 1883.

Torisashi is a Japanese dish of thinly sliced raw chicken breast. If the chicken is lightly seared it is known as toriwasa. It is most commonly eaten with sumiso but may also be eaten with soy sauce and wasabi like other sashimi.

Oyako means parent and child in Japanese and was originally the name I gave to a photo series I have now been working on since 1982.

This is a popular (at least in Hawaii) Japanese dish which is often served at restaurants in individual bowls. Oyako means mother and child, hence the main ingredients, chicken and eggs. Submitted by KIKUKAT. Updated on January 14, 2022.

What does Tama mean in Japanese egg? ›

卵 or Tamago is the Japanese word for Egg and is a staple ingredient in creating our best dishes! 🥚☀️ Order yourself a handcrafted Marugame Udon meal today via FoodPanda or GrabFood. 6 Shares. Kathleen Kewley Morada.

There are different theories about the origin of oyakodon, but it is believed that a customer at Tamahide, a restaurant in Tokyo that served gameco*ck dishes, used to eat the leftover meat and warish*ta (a seasoning for chicken and onions) with an egg and rice.

It was also common for peasants to forage for wild plants including tubers, bark, acorns, edible grasses, wild berries, beans, seeds, and nuts. Almost every type of flora or fauna that was edible was consumed. Peasants also ate grasshoppers, crickets, grub worms, and other insects.

Japan

Oyakodon / Origin

Japan is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south.

Wikipedia

A variation made with chicken katsu and egg is called oyako katsudon, which is distinguished from oyakodon where the meat in the latter is not fried.

Donburi is the generalized term for “bowl” in Japanese. It is also abbreviated as “don” when paired with a starring ingredient, typically a protein. Donburi are commonly topped with various proteins and/or vegetables.

If you've been to a donburi restaurant, you might have noticed that the dishes are not all called 'donburi'. Instead, the different varieties are usually identified by the suffix '-don'. Don (どん) is another possible pronunciation of the kanji 丼, and the meaning is exactly the same.

Chirashi donburi is scatter rice bowl. This means the toppings are scattered and could consist of sashimi and cooked ingredients. However, the major difference between chirashi donburi and chirashi sushi bowl is that chirashi sushi uses seasoned sushi rice while donburi is usually just plain sushi rice.