Some of the best recipes in life are the simplest.
Finding and replicating recipes that you see on things like social media or professional chef blogs can be a challenge. Sometimes you just want to throw some ingredients in a rice cooker and let the machine do the work for you, right? They are magical appliances that can even whip up a good roast beef, after all.
That’s exactly the mindset that our Japanese-language reporter Masanuki Sunakoma thought when his friend passed along a simple yet promisingly delicious rice cooker recipe. All he needed to make it was rice, canned tuna, and a jar of nametake (enoki mushrooms marinated in soy sauce).
▼ Masanuki already had a feeling that he’d love it since nametake was one of his favorite rice pairings as a child.
There is a bit of prep time involved, and the recipe may take as long as an hour and a half to make depending on your rice cooker’s average steaming time. It won’t cost you that much effort, though!
So without further ado, here’s the recipe.
Ingredients
1 jar of nametake (160 grams/5.6 ounces)
1 can of tuna (70 grams/2.5 ounces )
2 gou scoops of rice (equal to about 300 grams/10.6 counces)
First, wash the uncooked rice and soak it in a bowl for about 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes are up, drain it using a colander.
Next, pour the rice into the rice cooker.
Step three is to add the nametake and tuna – juices, oils, and all.
Addwater to the 2-gou mark on the inside of the rice cooker bowl, then give everything a good mix. With the press of the “cook rice” button, all you have to do now is wait.
And voila! The nametake tuna rice is done.
When Masanuki made it, just opening the lid of the rice cooker made his mouth water. It’s apparently good topped with sesame seeds or green onions, but he wanted to try the dish on its own first, and it was absolutely delicious! Both the nametake and tuna brought a ton of umami to the rice, almost like a blessing of the mountain mixed with a blessing of the sea. Masanuki could easily down two or three servings of this and still have room for more.
If you want to take it one step further, you can try serving this up as a seaweed-wrapped onigiri rice ball or even a pan-fried yakionigiri rice ball. There are plenty of ways to customize this simple dish.
In any case, this recipe got a solid five stars from Masanuki, and he’d recommend that everyone try making it and serving it up hot, chilled, in your lunch box, or on its own. It’s hard to mess this one up! And for dessert, you can serve up some rice cooker cake.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]