Gyudon (Japanese Beef Rice Bowl)

Gyudon (牛丼) is a Japanese donburi: thinly sliced beef and onion simmered in a broth of dashi, soy sauce, mirin and sake, served over hot rice. The name translates literally as "beef bowl". In Japan it's the signature dish of fast-food chains like Yoshinoya, Sukiya and Matsuya, and at home people make it on busy weeknights. It belongs to the same family of rice bowls as oyakodon, with chicken and egg, and katsudon, with a pork cutlet.

You want beef with some marbling: ribeye, chuck or brisket. Yoshinoya, according to the chain itself, uses short plate from the belly, where lean and fat run roughly 6 to 4. The easiest option is pre-sliced beef for shabu-shabu or hot pot, 1–2 mm thick, from an Asian grocer. If you're slicing it yourself, put the piece in the freezer for 30–40 minutes until firm but not frozen through, then cut across the grain with a sharp knife into slices no thicker than 2 mm.

The simplest option is granulated dashi, dissolved in hot water as the packet says. Without it, a light chicken or beef stock works: add an extra tablespoon each of soy sauce and mirin to 200 ml of stock to bring back the sweet-salty balance. The flavour will be softer and miss the smoky, fishy note of katsuobushi, but the gyudon will still be good. If you have no mirin either, 45 ml of sake or dry sherry with 3 teaspoons of sugar replaces 45 ml of mirin.

Sukiyaki is a nabe dish: beef, tofu, vegetables and shirataki noodles cook at the table in a shallow cast-iron pan, and the cooked pieces are dipped into beaten raw egg. The sukiyaki sauce is noticeably sweeter and stronger than gyudon broth. Gyudon is an everyday bowl: the beef and onion simmer in a thinner dashi-based broth and go straight onto rice with some of the sauce. If you like that flavour but want the meat in a crisp coating, try katsudon.

No, the egg is an optional extra. At Japanese chains people often order gyudon with a raw egg or onsen tamago, an egg held for a long time in water at about 65 °C so the white stays soft and the yolk runny. The yolk gets mixed into the hot beef and rice and turns into a creamy sauce. If raw egg puts you off, use a poached egg or a soft-boiled one: 6 minutes in boiling water, then straight into cold water.