After a trip to the 100 yen shop, our TKG looks like a million bucks.
If you’re from a part of the world where raw eggs aren’t commonly eaten, your knee-jerk reaction might be to call the practice “gross.” Japanese foodies would disagree with you, though, as tamagokakegohan, a raw egg cracked over a bowl of steaming hot white rice, is one of Japan’s favorite quick and comforting dishes.
Aside from the delicious flavor, we’ve now got another way that tamagokakegohan isn’t gross, thanks to a handy kitchen gadget that makes TKG (as it’s called for short) downright beautiful.
Being the admirably frugal types we are, we stumbled across the Fuwafuwa Egg Maker during our most recent trip to 100 yen store Seria. Fuwafuwa means “fluffy,” which isn’t a texture we usually associate with raw egg, but the packaging promised us a “blissful breakfast” with fluffy TKG, and for 100 yen (US$0.75), it was an offer we couldn’t refuse.
The apparatus has two parts, a cup and a lid. You start by cracking the egg and pouring the yolk into the indented section at the center of the lid, letting the rest of the egg flow down into the cup.
Then, using the provided stirring stick, you whip and churn the egg white into a frothy meringue.
Now dish yourself up a bowl of white rice (preferably fresh from the rice cooker or microwave, so that it’s nice and hot)…
…and pour the pillowy cloud of egg white on top.
Now all you have to do is add the yolk…
…and you’ve got yourself just about the prettiest TKG possible for such little effort.
Some people like to add a drizzle of soy sauce to their TKG, and that only made the whole thing look even more mouthwatering.
Aside from soy sauce-or-no-soy sauce, there’s one other question you’ll need to answer, which is how to go about eating this. It’s tempting to start by delicately taking up a bite-sized portion with your chopsticks, so as to leave the rest of the egg structurally intact. For better flavor, though, when eating TKG the egg should come into direct contact with the rice before it goes in your mouth, so the smarter choice is to stir the egg white, yolk, and rice all together with your chopsticks first (the merengue doesn’t mix with the yolk quite as easily as a normal, unwhipped egg does, so you might need to be extra thorough in stirring).
Sort of like cracking an egg, properly enjoying the flavor of fuwafuwa TKG involves irrevocably altering its appearance, so you’ll want to have your camera ready and take any snapshots before you start eating. Those pictures are likely to come out very nice, though, as this is easily one of the two most beautiful TKG we’ve ever eaten.
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