Simply put, “egg rice,” is a Japanese dish. “Tamago” is egg, “kake” is to mix, and “gohan” is rice.
This dish normally consists of a raw, fresh egg cracked on top of steamed rice and mixed together with a little bit of shoyu.
For many, it is a dish from childhood memories. I think it was popular because it was inexpensive and doesn’t take a lot of time to make.
What takes the longest is waiting for the rice to finish cooking. It is a must to put the raw egg on piping hot rice, or it’s just not the same.
Living on my own, I made it the way I learned and knew how from my mom, who used to make it often.
I filled the bowl with rice to the top, cracked the egg on top, drizzled shoyu over the egg, and mixed it all up. If the rice was hot, the mixture was nice and creamy, if not so hot, it’s kind of lumpy.
During this time, I didn’t know yet that egg whites started to coagulate at 145 degrees Fahrenheit and the yolks at 155 degrees Fahrenheit. All I knew was that it was delicious, ono and so comforting!
We always had fresh eggs from Peterson Farms in Wahiawa; it was also a time when we ate raw eggs without fear.
It was on a trip to Japan, for the pilot show of Family Ingredients, that we met the Hachisu family. Tadaaki was a rice farmer and also raised chickens that produced eggs.
One night, he showed us how he made his version of tamago kake gohan. It was a revelation. He had whipped the egg and rice with his chopsticks until it foamed. I had never seen that before. It made me feel like all this time I was making it “lazy-man style.”
This looked so luxurious and ever since that night, it has been the way I like it, unless I get lazy and just want to eat right away.
The key is don’t fill the bowl with so much rice … it’s really easy to do!
At one time, I never imagined eating or cooking rice with butter. I didn’t know any better at the time; just knew what I knew.
I think my mouth was wide open in amazement the first time I saw someone put butter on their cooked rice.
Rice cookery to me was limited to fried leftover rice with Spam, eggs and green onion, steamed Japanese rice, musubi, and the ultimate snack, yaki onigiri.
In my first year of culinary school at Kapiolani Community College, I read the menu for the day and one dish was titled “rice pilau” — can you imagine what I was thinking?!
I mention butter and pilau rice because this dish opened my eyes to other cuisines, styles and flavors.
Most times, I probably would make this egg rice the same way, but, eventually I will try something different.
If you try changing it up yourself, just think, it should go along with eggs and rice.
A breakfast combo? Omelet filling? Maybe.
How about lobster truffle butter tamago kake gohan with Chinese parsley!
Chef and restaurateur Alan Wong has wowed diners around the world for decades, and is known as one of the founders of Hawaii Regional Cuisine. Find his column in Crave every first Wednesday. Currently, Wong is dba Alan Wong’s Consulting Co.
