Super popular both in restaurants and at home, oyakodon (Japanese chicken and egg rice bowl) is kind of like Japan's pizza, if pizza was the kind of soul-satisfactory comfort food that is simple to make in about 20 minutes at home with minimal ingredients. This kind of fast and simple one-pot rice bowl has been a big time-saver for me in the kitchen with the extreme heat that we've been having on the peninsula, and my equally intense schedule lately.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (240ml) of homemade dashi, or Hondashi's equivalent (see note)

• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce (15 ml), plus more to taste.

• 2 teaspoons of dry sake (30ml)

• 1 tablespoon (15g) sugar and more sugar to taste.

• 1 big, slivered onion (about 6 ounces; 170g)

• 12 ounces (340g) boneless, skinless, thinly sliced chicken thighs (see note)

• 3 thinly cut, broken scallions

• Mitsuba 2 Stems (optional; see note)

• From 3 to 4 big eggs (see note)

For Serving:

• 2 cups of white cooked rice

• Togarashi (see note)

Directions

1. In a small saucepan, mix the dashi, soy sauce, sake and sugar and bring to a boil over high heat. To maintain a powerful simmer, change the fire. Stir in the onion and cook until the onion is half tender, stirring occasionally, for around 5 minutes. Add chicken pieces and cook until the chicken is cooked through and the broth has decreased by about half, 5 to 7 minutes for chicken thighs or 3 to 4 minutes for chicken breast, stirring and turning chicken occasionally. Stir in half of the scallions and all the mitsuba (if used), then add more soy sauce or sugar to taste with the broth as desired. A healthy sweet-and-salty taste should be present in the sauce.

2. Lower the heat to a bare simmer. In a medium dish, beat your eggs gently with chopsticks. In a small, steady stream, pour eggs into a pot (see note), keeping your chopsticks over the edge of the bowl to help spread eggs evenly (see video above). Cover and cook until the eggs are cooked to the perfect doneness, for runny eggs about 1 minute or for medium-firm eggs about 3 minutes.

3. To serve: Using a single wide bowl or 2 individual serving bowls to move hot rice. Top with the mixture of egg and chicken and pour out any excess broth over the rice from the saucepan. If needed, add an extra egg yolk to the centre of each bowl (see note). Garnish with the remaining half of the togarashi and the sliced scallions. Immediately serve.

Notes

For this simple dish, which has so many other strong flavors, homemade dashi is good, but not necessary. If you prefer, chicken breast can be used in place of the chicken thigh. Mitsuba is a related parsley-like Japanese herb. It can be found in grocery stores in Japan; if unavailable, omit it. Togarashi is a Japanese chili powder that comes in both varieties of ichimi (only chilies) and shichimi (mixed chilies with other dried aromatics). Any of them will work on this dish. Using 4 eggs, reserving 2 of the yolks, for a richer finished dish. In step 2, beat the extra egg whites and the remaining eggs together then add the reserved egg yolks to the finished bowls just before serving.