Nikujaga

Ingredients

• Beef — very thinly sliced300 g
• Potatoes — in large pieces700 g
• Onions2
• Carrot1
• Dashi400 ml
• Soy sauce60 ml
• Mirin60 ml
• Sake40 ml
• Sugar1 tbsp
• Shirataki noodles — optional200 g
• Vegetable oil20 ml
• Green beans100 g

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cut the potatoes into large pieces and soak them ten minutes in cold water to lose the surface starch.

   12 min

2. 2

   Fry the onion in oil for two minutes, add the thinly sliced beef and cook until it loses its pink.

   6 min

3. 3

   Add the potato and carrot and turn them so they take on the fat from the meat.

   4 min

4. 4

   Add the dashi, sake and sugar, bring it up and skim.

   6 min

5. 5

   Cover with an otoshibuta or a foil disc with a hole in it and simmer ten minutes over medium heat.

   12 min

6. 6

   Add the soy and mirin and simmer fifteen minutes more, until only a little liquid is left at the bottom.

   17 min

7. 7

   Add the beans for the last three minutes, take it off the heat and let it stand twenty minutes.

   24 min

About the dish

The beef is sliced very thin, so that it cooks in a couple of minutes. Thick pieces have no place here: nikujaga is not about the meat but about potato that has taken up its flavour.

An otoshibuta — a wooden lid resting directly on the food — presses it into what little liquid there is. Without it the top layer stays bland. A foil disc with a hole in it does the job.

The dish comes to its flavour as it cools rather than on the heat. The soy works into the potato while the pan stands, and nikujaga is noticeably better the next day.

Worth knowing

• — The soy goes in after the sugar and sake. Salt slows the sugar's penetration, and Japanese cooking fixes the order: sugar, sake, salt, soy, miso.
• — Do not stir the potatoes with a spatula. Rock the pan instead: stirred, they break up and cloud the broth.
• — Marbled sukiyaki beef is ideal, but any thinly sliced beef works. The thickness matters, not the grade.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

480 kcal

Protein

24 g

Fat

16 g

Carbs

56 g

More from Japan

• Miso soup — A soup of dashi and miso that takes ten minutes. Miso must never boil: boiling takes out both the aroma and the point of it.
• Katsudon — A breaded pork cutlet finished in sweet-salt broth with egg and slid onto rice.
• Shoyu ramen — Broth, tare and oil — three separate things assembled in the bowl rather than cooked together.