Donabe Yakiguri Gohan (Roasted Chestnut Rice) 焼き栗ご飯

Kuri-gohan and O-koge
Kuri-gohan is an autumn favorite, as are yaki-kuri (yakiguri), or roasted chestnuts. This dish is slightly novel in that combines the two. Kuri-gohan is wonderful but it lacks the smokey aroma of well roasted chestnuts. Peeling chestnuts is a bit of a pain, but it is worth the effort and cannot be beat. Roasting and peeling chestnuts can be done with family or friends and makes for a nice time. This dish goes well with seasonal tsukemono pickles and grilled fish.

This dish has a good deal of sugar content from the chestnuts, sake and mirin, so if cooked in a donabe earthenware pot you can be sure that you will get a nice crust of o-koge (お焦げ), slightly burned rice, at the bottom of the donabe pot.

Yakiguri Gohan – Roasting Chestnuts Over Open Flame

The same effect can be accomplished with charcoal, an electric broiler, or even a torch.

Yakiguri Gohan – Roasted Chestnuts, Still Smoldering

These are a bit underdone.

Yaki-kuri Gohan Recipe
Using roasted chestnuts makes this recipe different from the usual kuri gohan.

Ingredients

• 20-30 medium size fresh chestnuts
• 1 1/2 – 2 cups short grain white rice
• fresh water, equal to amount of rice after washing (if using donabe)
• 2 tablespoons sake (ryorishu cooking sake or sake)
• 1 tablespoon mirin
• 1/2 – 1 teaspoon salt
• dashi kombu (kelp for dashi broth)

Preparation
Peeling the chestnuts: There are numerous ways to peel chestnuts in Japan; boiling, roasting and just peeling raw with a sharp paring knife. Yakiguri (roasted chestnuts) gives a more kobashii (smokey and aromatic) flavor so we flamed the chestnuts to peel them. A charcoal grill could be used as well, the point is the infrared heat.

Chestnuts can be peeled easiest when they are hot, the hotter the better. Try roasting them in small batches to keep them hot while peeling. I burned away most of the outer shell over the gas range and then peeled away the inner skin with my fingers and sometimes favorite ceramic paring knife.

I returned the peeled chestnuts to the flame for just a few seconds to give them some additional ‘yaki’ roast flavor and aroma.

Donabe: Rinse the rice with water several times and place in colander while preparing the donabe and other ingredients. Remeasure rice and add to donabe. Add the same amount of water as rice. Then add sake, mirin and salt. Mix chestnuts into the rice and liquid and place small sheet of dried dashi kombu on top. You could use up to 1 cup of sake in place of water if you want to be very luxurious. Don’t skimp on salt, chestnuts need a good deal of salt to bring out their sweetness.

Heat until near boil and cover donabe. Reduce heat and set timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove heat (if you are using an electric range, move the donabe from heat source) and set timer for another 10 minutes.

Uncover and mix gently with shamoji rice paddle and break chestnuts into pieces. You could leave them whole if you like, but that creates a presentation conundrum, or at least in Kyoto it might.

Yakiguri Gohan – Roasted Chestnuts, Ready to Peel

These are well done, the shell has almost been burned away completely. The trick is to peel the inner skin while the chestnut is still hot.

Yakiguri Gohan – Peeled and Roasted Chestnuts

I put these to the flame again for a few seconds after peeling.

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe – Boiling and Ready to Cover

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe – 20 Minutes Later, Dekita! (Done)

Generally the kombu is discarded, but I (Peko) like to bite off a chunk and chew it while I am serving the meal.

Yakiguri Gohan – Two Ways to Serve

The Presentation Conundrum
The presentation conundrum is with the whole chestnuts, on the right. Some will probably have been broken in the peeling process and the rice sticks to the tops and sides of the chestnuts in an unnatural and icky way. While the whole chestnuts look much more sexy, gently breaking them with the shamoji rice paddle solves the presentation conundrum and creates a uniform taste. This dish has only three main flavors: rice, chestnut and salt. If you don’t have whole chestnut in every bite, you might be disappointed.

Yakiguri Gohan – Whole Chestnuts

Nice o-koge charring on rice from the bottom of the donabe, this maybe a little too much. The o-koge should never make the rice become hard nor black, golden brown is what you are after. A tiny bit less heat would have made the o-koge come out perfect.

Yakiguri Gohan – Rice and Chestnuts Mix

The bit of rice at the top right of the bowl sticking out is very bad form, you can tell a foreigner served this! Everything inside the bowl, no stray rice sticking grains to the mouth of the bowl!

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Gohan Nabe: Earthenware Pot for Cooking Rice
Rice cooked in a gohan nabe is noticeably tastier than in an electric rice cooker. Of course electric rice cookers are the norm in modern Japan. But there is a lot interest in gohan nabe recently, especially among the younger generation. The gohan nabe is different from a regular donabe in that it has an inner and outer lid. Any donabe needs to be seasoned before its first use.

I have noticed from comments and search access keywords that there is a fair amount in interest in donabe and gohan nabe among foodies abroad now. We have a good discussion going on in our Kyoto Support forum about how to season a donabe.

I thought that it would be useful to make a demonstration video on how to season a donabe as well.

Video: How to Season a New Donabe

Steps to Season a Donabe
Seasoning is done by boiling cooked rice in the donabe until it becomes a thick porridge. This fills microscopic pores in the donabe and will help to prevent breakage and damage by heat.

• Fill the donabe to about 80% with water then add cooked rice.
• The amount of cooked rice should equal about 1/5 of the volume of water. A little more rice is said to be better than less.
• Simmer gently over until the rice forms a thick porridge. This took me about an hour. Be careful not to cook it down so much that it burns.
• Allow donabe and porridge to cool to room temperature and then discard. Don’t leave to porridge in for more than a few hours.
• Wash and wipe well. Allow to dry overnight before first use.

Donabe Maintenance

• All donabe accumulate hairline cracks with use.
• When not in use never cover a dobane if it is not completely dry inside.
• Avoid mold developing inside the donabe.

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Donabe Takenoko Gohan (Bamboo Shoot Rice Cooked in Donabe) 土鍋竹の子ご飯
The variations of takenoko-gohan are many, I made this with chicken thigh. Shiitake mushroom is another popular ingredient. Using just takenoko is also very common and perhaps the most ‘Kyoto’ way to make this dish as it is simple, straight forward and focuses just on the taste of the natural, seasonal ingredients.

See ‘How To’ below and this KyotoFoodie article on How to Cook Fresh Bamboo Shoots.
・How to Cook Rice in a Donabe
・Takenoko Gohan Recipe (Bamboo Shoot Rice)

Precooked Takenoko

Simmering in Dashi Broth
Note the dashi pack on the upper right.

Simmering with Chicken
The amount of dashi has cooked down to about half. Ideally this will be the amount of liquid needed to cook the rice in.

Before: In Donabe with Atsuage Tofu and Kombu Added

After: Done Cooking, Ready to Enjoy

Donabe and Takenoko Gohan Served

Takenoko Gohan – detail

How to Cook Rice in a Donabe

Water to Rice Ratio
For donabe, the main point is the ratio of liquid to rice. More water is needed than for a modern, electric rice cooker. The ratio is very simple though; use the same volume of water as rice. (If you add dashi, cooking sake etc to the rice, count that as part of the water.) Some say that you should calculate this after you have thoroughly washed the rice as it will absorb some water and swell a little bit.

Heat and Cooking Time
Cook for 7-8 minutes and allow to sit for 10 minutes after removing heat.

A donabe is very thick and heavy and can take 5 minutes or so to bring to a boil. After it begins to boil, reduce heat. Every donabe is different so you need to learn the unique characteristics of yours. If you cover the donabe immediately after turning down the heat it might boil over immediately. Not all do though, it depends of the shape, thickness of the walls and whether or not it contains a small hole in the cover to release steam.

So, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for another 7 or 8 minutes.

Then, remove heat and allow to sit for another 10 minutes. As the donabe is very thick, even once you remove the heat, it will just keep on cooking for several minutes as though the gas were still on.

DO NOT remove the lid during these 18 or so minutes.

One of the delightful things about cooking in a donabe is that the rice at the bottom of the pot will burn, or caramelize slightly. This is considered good, and is called koge in Japanese. However, if it smells burned, remove heat immediately. If it does burn, don’t worry, you will likely just have lost the bottom few millimeters of your dinner.

If the donabe has a steam release hole, this will make it much easier to understand what is happening inside the donabe. Once there is no more steam escaping, dinner is done. At this point if you remove the heat, dinner ought to be perfect. Just a slight koge at the bottom, but not burned.

In Japan, newer gas ranges have a sensor that magically senses when the rice is done and automatically turns off. That is really totally awesome. My current gas range doesn’t have the sensor and my dobabe doesn’t have the steam release hole.

＊Again, each donabe design is different, so cooking times cannot be standardized. You will have to find the ‘Zen of Rice Cooking’ for the particular donabe that you have. Even the season and the freshness of the rice influences how much water will be required. Shinmai, or ‘new rice’ has more water content.

Takenoko Gohan Recipe (Bamboo Shoot Rice)

• 3 cups or rice (I use a combination of lightly milled brown rice, white rice and oshi-mugi, or pressed oats)
• 5-6 cups of dashi
• 2-3 cups of sliced (precooked) bamboo shoot
• 1-2 cups of chicken thigh, with skin
• atsuage toru (deep fried tofu)
• cooking sake
• mirin
• shoyu
• kombu
• ki-no-me (sansho pepper plant leaves)

This is my recipe. I start with 5 or 6 cups of water and bring to boil and add ‘dashi pack’. See photo, it’s the tea bag looking thing. Of course dashi powder or concentrate is available, but if you use a dashi pack with natural ingredients, the taste will be completely superior.

Add the sliced bamboo shoot and bring to boil. If you are using canned or packaged bamboo shoot you can probably add the chicken right away, but I did my takenoko fresh today and it was still somewhat bitter after I ‘precooked’ it, so I boiled it alone in the dashi for about 20 minutes then added the chicken.

I simmered the takenoko and chicken in the dashi for about an hour total, until the amount of liquid had been reduced to about half.

I put about half cup of cooking sake (OK, probably a whole cup) in the donabe, added the rice after washing it and then measured out the required amount of dashi, which came to be all I had left. On top of this, I add the bamboo, chicken, sliced atsuage tofu and a few pieces of kombu. Finally one tablespoon each of mirin and shoyu. (If you can’t obtain mirin, you can skip it completely or add a tiny bit of sugar.)

Cover and cook as shown above.

After cooking (and sitting 10 minutes) turn over gently with a rice paddle or similar utensil, mixing the ingredients in the donabe. Re-cover for several minutes and then serve in a large bowl and garnish with ki-no-me (sansho pepper leaf) if you can obtain it.

Of course, this dish can be cooked in a conventional rice cooker or metal pot.