There is a kind of holiness in the simplicity of donburi, which is infinite, permeable and variable. With its steaming lightly grilled eel resting on rice, every bowl of unadon I’ve eaten at Osaka’s Kuromon Market, devoured in the mornings after hanging out with the gays in the city’s Doyama district, has come as close as possible. that I have found to divinity. And no matter how sleepy, hungover, or hungry I’ve found myself, every bowl of sinew I’ve ripped, standing cross-legged in a train station, has been ethereal enough to carry me wherever I go. Even just looking at the glistening bowls of animated katsudon (fried pork loins, simmered in eggs) in animated episodes of “Yuri!!! on Ice” is reason enough to wonder what I sacrificed in a past life to justify such a decline in this one.
But while each iteration of donburi has three types of magic, I’ll always come back to oyakodon. The name of the dish translates as “parent-child bowl.” Seasoned chicken is simmered in dashi, along with soy sauce, mirin, and a distributor’s choice of flavors, before being served and swallowed as the runny yolks mix with your bowl’s filling. While oyakodon’s exact origins remain obscure, one of its earliest recorded mentions may have been in 1884, in an advertisement for a restaurant in Kobe; by other accounts, the centuries-old Tamahide restaurant in Tokyo claims responsibility for the dish.
Little epiphanies: the suppleness of the chicken, the softness of the egg, the reassuring tug of rice on the teeth.
My own forays into the kitchen were, at first, failures. It would overcook the chicken. Or it would overcook the eggs. The seasoning was not present, or was too heavy. Or my fill liquid calibration wasn’t quite right, beating the rice bowl instead of helping it. One of the joys of oyakodon is that no ingredient is too flashy, it just works. And while eating a dish cooked by shop clerks, chain store chefs, train stall owners or restaurateurs, all working to the highest levels of precision, it certainly has its joys, cooking your own oyakodon constitutes a number of small epiphanies: the flexibility of the chicken. , the softness of the egg and the reassuring tug of the rice on the teeth make it a familiar and undeniably indispensable meal.
So there are as many ways to prepare oyakodon as there are chefs, and the formula mostly remains the same, but honestly, ultimately it’s all about feelings. My ideal oyakodon may not look exactly like yours, but both will be delicious. And when you’re cooking this dish, particularly for the first time, it helps to pay attention to the recipe, sure, but also to the sound of each ingredient as it simmers in your pan, and how the smell begins to envelop your kitchen. as it nears completion. With each attempt, your preferences may change, and with each alteration you make, oyakodon becomes fully and decidedly yours.
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