For those of you that are familiar with Japanese fast food, you’ve probably heard of Yoshinoya. It’s a fast food chain that specializes in rice bowls and they’re particularly well known for their gyudon (beef donburi).
This popularity was elevated to cult status when the Japanese government banned American beef imports due to the mad-cow scare. Being a fast food chain, they couldn’t afford to buy Japanese beef and continue selling the bowls for $3, so they halted the sale of their signature dish and replaced it with butadon (pork donburi). Their loyal fans where crushed and there was much hullabaloo over the whole episode until the menu item was restored a few years ago.
Honestly, I don’t get the appeal. True, it’s cheap, but there were people flying from Tokyo to LA to have a bowl during the beef-outtage, so that argument doesn’t really hold. Here’s my rendition of the popular dish. It’s truly as simple to make as it looks and yet it makes for a satisfying meal.
It’s important that you use a tender cut of beef with a lot of marbling. Since this is supposed to be a cheap dish, I pick up packs of “kiriotoshi” which are the odds and ends of high quality beef that’s left after they slice the beef for sukiyaki and shabu shabu. If you don’t happen to live near a Japanese grocery, you can semi-freeze a piece of beef and use a sharp knife to cut it across the grain into thin slices.
In other news, Kang over at London Eater has tagged me for a meme. I don’t participate in memes, but since he was nice enough to tag me and because he has a great collection of London restaurant reviews (which I’m sure to use the next time I’m over there) y’all should check out London Eater.
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Perhaps it’s your body telling you that you need more iron, or maybe it’s a commercial you saw on TV, but sometimes you get a hankerin’ for a big juicy steak that just can’t be satisfied by any other means. In New York that usually means you head to Peter Luger’s, Strip House, Craft Steak, or one of the other dozen premium steak houses in town. This also means your wallet will be about $150 lighter.
Being on a budget, I almost never go to a steak house as it’s about the easiest thing you can make at home and it will cost less than 1/3 of the price. All you need is a good cut of meat, a heavy bottomed pan and timer. I went with two 10 oz. dry aged rib eye steaks from Whole Foods at $25 a lb. It’s not the best piece of meat I’ve ever had, but it was a heck of a lot better than most steaks I’ve had in restaurants and took me about 10 minutes from start to finish.
The trick is to get a heavy bottomed pan (which means the heat is distributed evenly) really hot then sear the steaks on either side for a few minutes. Doing it over medium heat ensures an enticing brown crust without destroying a stainless steel pan and a sheet of aluminum foil prevents a huge mess of splattered grease.
Chimichurri sauce is an Argentinian condiment served with meat that usually consists of oil, parsley, and some kind of acid, but for my version, I opted for mint and lime. It lightens up the heavy hunk of beef and provides a nice tart contrast while the olive oil adds some extra body to the meat.
I served this a with truffle creamed chard which I’ll tell you more about tomorrow.
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No… I’m not going to bust out singing that Japanese pop song from the 60’s that got renamed for the US market by some culturally insensitive prick record executive. Instead you get my rendition of this ubiquitous dish that’s become synonymous with Japanese food. Not that I have anything against record execs, or even renaming songs, but really… did ya have to name it after a hotpot dish? I wonder how that guy would have felt if I took a song like “Unchained Melody” and renamed it “Beef Stew” in Japan because it’s easier to say and more catchy.
There are many styles of making this, but perhaps the most common way is to cook meat and veggies in a sweet soy sauce based broth at the table. While I’m a big fan of the table top cooking method (especially for Shabu Shabu), I actually prefer to pre-cook the stuff separately and just serve the sukiyaki in a large bowl in the center of the table.
Regardless of how you decide to cook it, it makes for a really simple weeknight meal that requires no more than some washing and cutting of veggies. It’s typically made with thin slices of well marbled beef, but you could really use just about anything. Japanese markets tend to have the meat pre-sliced and packaged. I lucked out and got a pack of wagyu end-cuts (kiriotoshi) for a couple bucks. Because they were the end cuts the pieces were kinda irregular (which would be a problem for shabu shabu), but works just fine for sukiyaki. The most important thing is that the meat is tender and has a good amount of fat marbled with the meat.
For veggies you can use just about anything. I went mostly traditional using Tofu, green onions, bamboo, enoki mushrooms, and chrysanthemum leaves, but I also added some fresh summer squash I got at the farmers market the other day. It’s a good way to clean out the vegetable drawer in your fridge.
Traditionally it’s eaten by dipping the cooked meat into a raw egg, but due to the potential for getting salmonella I wouldn’t recommend it. You could soft poach or coddle the egg, but I still don’t think that would technically be “safe”. Instead I just grate some raw yamaimo (japanese mountain yam) also known as nagaimo which has the texture and slimy consistency of a raw egg when grated. If all this talk of slimy things is turns you off, or you can’t find it, you could always just skip it.
Leftover sukiyaki makes for a great bowl of udon (with some boiled noodles and egg cooked in the broth), or you could turn it into a donburi by reheating it with some beaten egg on top then serving it over a bowl of rice.
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Wagyu beef has become synonymous with beer fed, massaged beef that no-one can afford. Just one look at the menu’s of many New York steakhouses and you’ll see that Wagyu from Japan lists at around $30 per OUNCE!
Now I’m definitely one to pay the extra buck for quality food, but 30 bucks a bite is a bit steep even for me. I’ve tried both Australian, and American raised Wagyu which are both cheaper than the Japanese kind and while admittedly good, they left me wondering why I paid so much for something only marginally better than a good grass-fed steak.
So Saturday I’m at the Mitsuwa in Edgewater, New Jersey doing my monthly Japanese food run and I noticed these big banners advertising Ohmi Wagyu beef. I’ve seen them carry Wagyu before but they were expensive, and given my past experiences I had no desire to spend $40 for a small steak. As I worked my way to the meat section, I noticed a massive crowd gathered around a table that was wafting a heavenly scent. Samples!
As you probably guessed by now, one taste is all it took before I was hooked. I had the beautifully marbled steak you see above in my cart before the buttery flavor of the sample had left my mouth. A quarter pound of beef for two people isn’t much, but really you have to think of this as foie gras or caviar. It’s something you savor for its deliciousness, not something you’d make an entire meal out of. And delicious it was. I sliced it up, got a pan super hot and quickly seared each side, dipping it in some cherry wood smoked salt and sesame oil on the way to my mouth.
So what is Wagyu and why is it so good? It’s actually a breed of cattle that has been breed specifically for a high fat content. The ones raised in Japan are fed a mix of corn, wheat, rice, sake and beer and are cared for on an individual level (no overcrowded feed lots). Some ranches even massage their cows as it is believed that a calm and stress-free cow yields better meat. Over the past 20 years, some of these cattle have been exported to the US and Australia where ranchers have tried to emulate their production, but having had both, I’d have to say that something in the water ain’t the same.
For those of you in the US that don’t live near a Mitsuwa, you can order it online directly from the importer at ADiRECT Foods.
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