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Travel notesCook the local flavors once moreOmurice

Cook the local flavors once more

Chuo, Tokyo

Omurice

From: A downtown table in a Tokyo row house

Omurice topped with plenty of ketchup
Omurice topped with plenty of ketchup

One story has it that omurice was born in the mid-1920s at a Western-style restaurant in Osaka, where the owner wrapped ketchup rice in a thin omelet for a regular with a weak stomach. Tokyo, too, has many old yoshoku restaurants, and old-fashioned Western-style dishes feel like a Tokyo taste. Tonight I wrapped chicken-and-onion ketchup rice in egg in the row-house kitchen.

Ingredients

  • Cooked rice
  • Chicken
  • Onion
  • Eggs
  • Ketchup
  • Parsley

How I made it

  1. Chop the onion
  2. Fry the chicken and onion in ketchup, then add the rice and mix
  3. Beat the eggs and pour into a hot frying pan to make a thin omelet
  4. Wrap the ketchup rice in the omelet and top with ketchup

Sources: osaka-info.jp rurubu.jp

This moment in the journey

Old-fashioned yoshoku: omurice

Tokyo has plenty of specialties, but old-fashioned yoshoku, Japanese-style Western food, feels like one of them to me. Tonight, omurice. I chopped an onion, fried it with chicken in ketchup, then added rice and stirred it all with a wooden spatula.

I beat eggs in a bowl and poured them into the hot frying pan. A thin omelet wrapped around the ketchup rice, and a ladle of ketchup went over the top. I thought of that stylish era when Western and Japanese culture first mingled.

Watch this scene on YouTube4:57

Read this scene in the full journey

Chopping an onion on a cutting board
Chopping an onion on a cutting board
Standing in the kitchen by the toaster oven and rice cooker
Standing in the kitchen by the toaster oven and rice cooker
Chicken and onion fried in ketchup in a frying pan
Chicken and onion fried in ketchup in a frying pan
Adding rice from a bowl to the frying pan
Adding rice from a bowl to the frying pan
Rice going into the ketchup-flavored filling
Rice going into the ketchup-flavored filling
Mixing the rice and filling with a wooden spatula
Mixing the rice and filling with a wooden spatula
Emptying the last of the rice from the bowl
Emptying the last of the rice from the bowl
Cooking in the kitchen, seen from behind
Cooking in the kitchen, seen from behind

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