Gyu-don is a typical light Japanese meal that many enjoy for lunch, but can easily be served for dinner as well. The dish itself takes only 30 minutes to cook, but it takes a bit of preparation time, unless you have some thinly sliced beef in the freezer. What you need is:
500 gr thinly sliced beef (not too lean)
1 very large onion or two medium large onions
500 ml of water
60 ml of soy sauce
50 ml of white wine
60 gr of sugar
30 ml of mirin
1 large spoon of dashi
Grated ginger according to taste (1-2 teaspoons)
Others:
freshly cooked rice
Shichimi Togarashi
First the meat must be shell frozen, it's possible to cut it in very thin slices. Put it in the freezer for 3 hours before cutting, then take it out, and use a very sharp knife to slice as thinly as possible:
Then it should look something like this:
It can be hard to slice the last part of the meat, so it's a good idea to have a "surplus bag" in the freezer to fill up with bits you can use for stews later:
Now cut the sliced meat in lengths of 4-5cm:
Please note that we are cooking a double portion in the pictures, so we're using 1 kg of meat.
Now place a large pan with tall sides on the stove and add water, soy sauce, mirin, ginger, white wine, sugar, and dashi:
Cut onions in strips while the mixture is brought to a boil:
Add the onions:
Boil them at medium heat for 5-10 minutes, and then add the meat:
Boil the meat for 15-20 minutes until tender, and skim the foam off while boiling:
When it's done, it should look something like this:
Now fill a large bowl less than half was with freshly cooked rice, pour a bit of the liquid from the pan over the rice, and place a suitable amount of the dish on top. Sprinkle the dish with Shichimi Togarashi according to your preference:
Enojoy! And that being said, there's also a "bonus version" where you add eggs - we usually cook this one the following day, when we have just less than half left over. Beat a suitable amount of eggs (for a the amount in this recipe around 8-10 eggs) and pour it over the dish when it's done cooking or has been reheated:
Put a lid on and let it steam for a few minutes:
You can decide if the eggs should be almost raw or fully cooked, we like them somewhere in between, and then the finished dish looks like this:
Yum!
