Rice is such a versatile ingredient. It can be a side dish, a main course, a palette cleanser…really anything you want it to be! Not only does rice have its own comforting taste, but it also soaks up flavor like no other grain. With plenty time on my hands during the coronavirus pandemic and shelves full of food, I decided to eat rice for all three meals. Spoiler alert: it was just as amazing as I thought it would be.
Breakfast
I’m not a morning person, so an easy meal for breakfast is a necessity. Fried rice is the perfect solution. It’s simple to prepare, simple to cook and you can put anything you want in it. Additionally, you don’t even need fresh rice. Leftover rice works just as well. Here we have another reason to applaud rice: its longevity.
Fried Rice
Ingredients
Instructions
Cook the rice and dice the vegetables and meat. Feel free to add more than just celery and carrots (for example, mushrooms or bean sprouts).
Add garlic to a hot pan and sauté the vegetables with a dash of salt and pepper. Cook the meat and scramble the eggs. Any meat or meat substitute will work in fried rice.
Add rice to large pan. If reheating leftover rice make sure to add 1/4 cup of water. Add vegetables, meat and eggs and stir until mixed completely. Feel free to add furikake or other seasonings for a finishing touch.
Lunch
The midday meal should always been a lighter one in my opinion. During a day dedicated to eating rice, I couldn’t omit onigiri, rice balls, the traditional Japanese lunch.
Onigiri
Ingredients
Instructions
Cook the rice, cut the seaweed into strips and prepare a clean surface to work on. Wash your hands thoroughly and rub some salt on them while they are still damp. You can mix some rice with sesame salt to give your onigiri some variety.
With a large handful of rice, take the filling and press it into the center. Traditionally, onigiri is filled with umeboshi (pickled plum.) However, sometimes smoked salmon, dried fish or other pickled foods are substituted. You can really fill them with whatever you like.
Mold the rice into a triangle around the filling. Wrap the onigiri in seaweed, folding the strip over the bottom edge of the triangle. You can add sesame seeds or furikake to the edges for some extra pizzazz.
Dinner
It’s time to finish off the day with something delicious. We of course have to make something a little bit fancier than the other meals because you’ve got to end the day with a bang! A popular dish is donburi, which is usually something fried over rice. There are lots of different variations of donburi. Popular types are tendon (tempura over rice) and katsudon (fried pork over rice).
Katsudon
Ingredients
Instructions
Cook the rice. While it’s cooking, slice the vegetables into thin strips and clean a surface to prepare the meat.
Simmer the carrots and onions with a dash of salt, pepper and soy sauce. Feel free to add other vegetables of your choice (for example asparagus or bell peppers)
Take the meat and cover with a thin layer of flour. Then dip in egg and generously cover in panko. Fry in oil until completely brown and at least 165°.
Slice the meat into strips and serve over a large bowl of rice with the vegetables. Cover the meat and rice in your choice of sauce/seasoning, tonkatsu is the traditional sauce for katsu.
Even after this period of staying home all day ends, don’t forget about these incredible rice-based dishes. They’re easy, tasty and appealing to everyone.