Occasionally, there are days I cannot pick up my daughter from the kindergarten at 2:00PM due to my work or other engagements. When that happens, my kind parents who live an hour away in Saitama, a prefecture north of Tokyo, come for the rescue. Of course they happily come all the way to Tokyo to spend time with their dearest granddaughter, but it’s still a huge favour they do for me. As a sign of gratitude, I cooked Sukiyaki-esque lunch for them in the morning, along with my daughter’s bento.

It’s a quick & easy one-pan dish, but  is tasty and fulfilling thanks to thin slices of Japanese beef that’s a little fattier than lean beef that is common elsewhere.

This is how I make it:

1) In a medium frying pan on a medium heat, stir-fry a half onion, thinly sliced, with a table spoon of cooking oil, until translucent

2) Add 200g of thinly sliced beef and stir fry a bit more

3) When the beef starts to brown, still reddish on the edges, add the Sukiyaki sauce mixture (1 table spoon each of sake & soy sauce, 3+ table spoons of mirin) and bring it to boil

4) Once it starts to boil, pour a beaten egg evenly on the beef
5) Put the lid on, lower the heat, and cook until the egg is cooked (for bento, heat the egg completely, but if you eat right after, a half cooked egg is also quite tasty)
6) Turn off the heat, and sprinkle chopped spring onion on the beef
Place it on top of freshly cooked rice – it makes a nice Sukiyaki-esque Gyudon (beef donburi) dish.
Menu for bento:

Sukiyaki-esque Gyudon (with steamed carrot slices), Spinach goma-ae, Boiled green beans, Cherry tomatoes

Kaki persimmon & Kyoho grapes for dessert

For other donburi recipes, here are the popular ones:

Mum’s nikudon

Tori don

Oyakodon