Monday, September 6, 2010

Mushroom rice (a.k.a. kinoko gohan)

Ingredients (makes enough for 4 people):
rice, 3 cups
dashi liquid, 540 ml
mirin, 2 tbsp
cooking sake, 3 tbsp
soy sauce 3 tbsp
mushrooms of your choice (this evening I used shiitake, maitake, lion's mane; if you can find matsutake that's the best; fresh mushrooms are better than dried, but if you use dried reconstitute them first), however much you like (I used maybe 3 handfuls tonight)
vegetable oil
green onions

1. Make the dashi: this is the bonito-based soup stock. You can find shiitake-based dashi sometimes now, which would probably be really good with this. Anyway, make 540 ml of it.

2. Wash the rice and put it in your rice cooker, then instead of filling it with water up to the 3-cup mark, use the dashi liquid. Let it sit (don't turn it on yet) while you do the next couple of steps.

3. Mix the mirin, cooking sake, and soy sauce together and put aside. If you don't cook with alcohol, you can skip the sake and buy non-alcoholic mirin.

4. Cut your mushrooms into bite-size pieces (with shiitake and other large-cap mushrooms it works best to cut them into strips, like you see with dried shiitake).

5. Sautee the mushrooms in the oil until they get tender.

6. Add the mirin/sake/soy sauce to the rice and dashi and stir.

7. Put sauteed mushrooms on top of the rice. Make sure they're submerged in the liquid, but don't mix into the rice.

8. Turn on your rice cooker and cook normally.

9. When it's done, mix the mushrooms into the rice.

10. Serve with chopped green onions to taste.

7 comments:

  1. What timing - Akiko was making this at the very moment I saw Joanna's question. As soon as she hit the "on" button on the rice cooker I asked her into the study to post the recipe.

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  2. whoa this sounds really awesome!!!....what section of the Asian grocery do I go to for dashi? I am thinking I need some. Also, any brands that I can look for that would help me to interpret foreign characters? The labelling in my Asian grocery is not consistently English-friendly.

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  3. I would think dashi would be in the soup-mixes section. That's where I always find it. It's pretty essential, since you use it as the base for miso soup as well (and when winter comes I'll post my recipe for pork-miso soup). The standard brand (I'm not sure I've ever seen another) is Ajinomoto hon-dashi, and it has English on the label when sold here. You can get it in little bottles, or foil packets. Here's what it looks like: http://importfood.com/sphd2291.html (I need to learn how to embed a link in a comment.)

    I can't seem to find a link to any of the brands of shiitake dashi I've seen for sale, but I know I've bought it in the States - I was making miso for a vegetarian guest once and that's how I discovered it.

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  4. This sounds exciting, and bonus points for being able to stick it all in the rice cooker.

    If I can't find shiitake dashi do you think mushroom buillon/broth would be a reasonable substitute (because I have a decent one) or is that just not like dashi at all?

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  5. Good question. I've never had mushroom bullion. Akiko thinks it might work, but you might want to make it at less than full strength? I'm imagining mushroom bullion to be maybe a little salty, and shiitake dashi wouldn't be. It'd be worth a try, I imagine.

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  6. We made this with maitakes and shiitakes and it was really good. Eric wants to add some extra veggies next time, though. We used mushroom bouillon (Better than Bouillon, actually, from a jar) instead of dashi but it didn't taste too salty to me or anything, so I think it worked fine. Thanks for the recipe.

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