Food
日本
YOSHINOYA AUTHENTIC GYUDON, TOLD TO ME BY A VERY KNOWLEDGABLE JAPANESE GIRL
You’re going to need to buy some ingredients. It’s easy, though. If you have an asian food store, you’re set.
- 80g of Chopped Beef. You have to chop this thinly.
- ¼ of an onion.
- Rice. Get white rice, none of that Uncle Ben’s stuff. The rice has to stick to itself.
- 360ml Water
- 1 ½ Tbsp Shoyu (Soy Sauce, I just typed it in Japanese to be pretentious.)
- 1 ½ teaspoons of sugar. Regular old, white grain sugar. The kind you use to make Kool Aid.
- Hondashi – This is a Japanese soup base. It should be like, $1.50 for a small bottle of it. You only need a teaspoon, though, so if your neighbor is the sort likely to have Hondashi, by all means, just go over and ask to borrow some. They won’t mind. When you tell them you’re making Yoshinoya Gyudon, they’ll think you’re a great cook.
- MSG – Not necessary, but it helps.
- Ginger Juice – only a few drops of this stuff. Alternatively, you can just steal some pickled ginger next time you go eat sushi.
- Vinegar – A few drops.
- A little butter.
Cooking it:
- Spread out the beef strips on a cutting board, and pound them with something until they’re very thing.
- Slice up the onion.
- Put all the ingredients except the meat and onion in a pot. Heat it up and stir it, until it begins to boil. Put it on low heat for a few minutes, and skim the top for crusty brown stuff. This is called aku. You don’t want this in your food.
- Add the onions, simmer for a couple more minutes.
- Add a little butter, and the meat, and mix it together.
- Scoop out the mixture with a slotted spoon, and put it on top of rice and eat it. Of course, the sauce is good too, and some people like it tsuyudaku (Soaked with sauce.)
There. You just made some damn good Gyudon, and it took you less than 15 minutes. If you actually make this, email me and let me know how it went. Alternatively, you can substitute mirin (a kind of rice wine) for the vinegar. It makes it taste sweeter.
When you finish (and this is very necessary), sit back, satisfied, knowing that you cooked a damn good meal, and you never needed Kobe beef to do it.