To make donburi, rice is scooped into an oversized bowl and topped with meat, seafood, vegetables or eggs or a combination of two or more of these ingredients. The result is a complete meal in a bowl.
If that description makes you think of a vast array of rice bowl dishes in other parts of Asia, that’s because rice bowl dishes are ubiquitous across Asia.
For example.
“Rice topping” is the Filipino term for single-serve rice bowl dishes. A deep bowl is filled with rice and the ulam, or viand (meat, seafood or vegetables, or a combination of one or all of them), is heaped on top of the rice. “Rice topping” dishes, labeled as such, can be found in the menu of Filipino and Chinese restaurants in the Philippines.
Korea has its signature rice bowl dish, the bibimbap and its less spicy sibling, the heotjesabap.
How many kinds of donburi are there?
Oh, so many, and their names all end with “don” which means bowl. What comes before “don” depends on what topping is added to the rice.
Chicken and egg simmered in dashi, soy sauce and rice wine is oyakodon while deep-fried breaded pork similarly simmered with egg is katsudon.
If the topping is beef and onion with soy sauce sweetened with mirin, it’s called gyudon.
And then, there’s soboro don. Minced chicken cooked in soy sauce, sugar, sake and mirin served over rice with egg and greens. The chicken is seasoned like teriyaki but a bit sweeter.
Rice topped with pork is butadon which is very similar to the Taiwanese lu rou fan.
Tempura over rice is tendon.
Above, one of the best rice bowls we had in Osaka is a combination of ikuradon (with seasoned ikura or salmon roe) and hokkaidon (with thinly sliced salmon).
Chukadon
Among all Japanese donburi dishes, chukadon seems to be the least well known. One explanation could be that this stir fried vegetables and meat rice bowl dish looks more Chinese than Japanese. And yet, the name — chukadon — is decidedly Japanese. What gives?
Chukadon is an inexpensive fast food dish sold in Chinese restaurants in Japan. If you know how such wanderers the Chinese are, even before written history, you’d know how they traveled and settled all around Asia, bringing with them the food of their regions. Many of the dishes they introduced to their new home were given local names to make them more acceptable.
Sounds like chop suey, doesn’t it? Yes, it does. And if it’s any surprise, chop suey, like chukadon, is not even traditional Chinese. Although there are countless stir fried vegetable dishes in Chinese cuisine, the term “chop suey” was born in America. Even I didn’t know that until recently. And to think that the oldest Chinatown in the world world is in my country.
According to one story:
It is said that some Chinese cook working during the Gold Rush served it as a personal “fuck you” to some drunk American miners.
Just like the Chinese-American chop suey, chukadon is made with bits and pieces of vegetables, and whatever small amounts of of meat or seafood can be had. It is an ideal dish to make with leftovers. Dice vegetables and meat (or seafood), stir fry, season, add sauce, scoop over rice in a bowl and you have chukadon.
