Gyudon bento (braised beef with konnyaku noodles in a bento box)

Tam West

Gyudon (in Japanese, “Gyu” means beef and “don” means bowl) is a staple dish for Japanese people and we make this dish when we want to have something nice and flavoursome but have only a very short amount of time to prepare. Simplicity and speed means that it’s a perfect dish for a lunchbox— a bento. You can also serve it as a hot meal using the hot cooking broth and hot rice rather than cold. For this recipe I have used konnyaku noodles (see pantry note below). If you can’t find them you can make this dish without them.

Ingredients

½	Onions, sliced
3 slices	Ginger, julienned
2 ½ Tbsp	Soy sauce
2 Tbsp	Sake
2 Tbsp	Mirin
1 Tbsp	White sugar
½ tsp	Dashi
1 cup	Water
250 g	Beef, thinly sliced (Main)
100 g	Konnyaku noodles (Main)
360 g	Rice, cooked and cooled
1 sprinkle	Toasted sesame seeds
2 servings	Broccoli, blanched, to serve
2 servings	Lettuce, to serve
2 servings	Cherry tomatoes, to serve

Directions

1. In a medium-sized pot, add onion, ginger, soy sauce, cooking sake, mirin, sugar, dashi and water and bring to the boil.
2. Reduce heat to medium-high and add beef and konnyaku noodles and cook for 20 minutes, removing scum as it appears on the surface. Drain away the liquid and leave beef and noodles to cool.
3. Put steamed rice in to a lunchbox, place the braised beef on top, sprinkle with sesame seeds and garnish with broccoli, lettuce and cherry tomatoes

Pantry notes

1. Thinly sliced beef is available in the frozen section of Asian grocers. It is also used a lot for hot-pots such as shabushabu as the texture always remains soft and juicy. If you can't locate it, you could semi-freeze a small piece of beef and slice thinly.
2. Konnyaku (shirataki) noodles are made from konnyaku potato. They are very low in calories but high in minerals. They come thin and thick, dark and light. Find them at Asian grocers. Leave them out of this recipe if you wish.