Chicken Mushrooms Takikomi Gohan

Ingredient:

2 cups Japanese short grain rice

2 cups water

1 piece chicken thigh

1 Mitake mushrooms*

1 Shimeji mushrooms*

1 Shiitake mushrooms*

1 knob ginger (20g)

3 tablespoon mentsuyu** (sub: soy sauce)

3 tablespoon sake (to cook rice)

1 tablespoon sake (to marinate chicken)

2 table spoon mirin

Chopped chives to serve

*You can use any kind of mushrooms as a substitute for the Japanese mushrooms.

**Mentsuyu is a Japanese soup base containing sake, mirin, soy sauce, and Katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes).

Direction:

1. Wash the rice gently with water then drain. Repeat this process a few times until water is clear.

2. Add rinsed rice, water, mentsuyu, sake and mirin in the pot and soak it for 30 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, prepare mushrooms by cutting off the base or stems and slice or shred into bite-sized pieces.

4. Chop chives finely.

5. Slice ginger into very thin strips.

6. Cut the chicken into 1-inch cubes. Add 1 tablespoon of sake and let it sit for a minute.

7. Add chicken, mushrooms and ginger into the pot.

8. Put the lid on and bring it up to boil. Once the steam comes out from the lid that is the sign of boiling. Continue cooking over high heat for 5 minutes. DO NOT OPEN THE LID while the rice cooks.

9. Turn down the heat to low and cook another 15 minutes.

10. Turn off the heat completely and let it sit for 10 minutes. Once the rice is ready mix all the ingredients evenly. Don’t miss scraping the crispy rice at the bottom of the pan. That’s the best part!

11. Sprinkle chives to serve.

Itadakimasu :)