An Attempt at Cooking: Gomoku Gohan

“Gomoku-gohan”: a mixed rice dish. “Gomoku” means a mixture of, typically 5, ingredients (vegetables and meat) and “gohan” means rice. It is a type of “Maze-gohan” dish; “maze” meaning mixed. “Maze-gohan” is similar to “takikomi-gohan”, but the key difference is that maze-gohan mixes cooked ingredients with cooked rice and takikomi-gohan mixes uncooked ingredients with uncooked rice and is cooked altogether. This recipe is based off of what my father used to make when I was a child. As a bonus, meat can be removed from the recpie to make the dish vegetarian friendly.

Main Ingredients (It’s all about the ratios):

Carrot: 1 stick
Burdock Root: 1 stick
Konyaku (yam cake): 1 block. 1 carrot to 200g is enough
Meat (chicken breast or pork): Half a pound. Can be ommitted for vegetarians.
Chikuwa (optional, fish cake): 1 stick
Age (optional, deep fried tofu): 1

Sauce Ingredients:

Soy Sauce: 250ml
Cooking Sake: 70ml
Sugar: 0.5 Tbs
Salt: Pinch

Steps:

Mince all the vegetables.
Let the minced root vegetables (carrots and burdock) sit in water for 10-20 minutes.
Mince the konyaku. Mince the konyaku small so that when the konyaku is boiled later on, it has a chance to fully absorb the flavors.
Slice/Mince the meat.
Drain the root vegetables.
Place vegetables into large pot and fill with just enough water to cover the vegetables.
Bring to medium boil and add the sauce ingredients.
Add in konyaku.
Add in meat.
Continue to boil for 15-25 minutes until most of the liquid has boiled off. Mix occasionally.
Look at the color of the burdock root. If it is still white colored, it is not quite done. Once the burdock has reached a slight brown color, it is considered done. This is still not quite done.

This is the target end product color and moisture level.
Mix with cooked rice. Mix a ladle’s worth of mix with about 1.5 cups of rice. Taste test. If this is not enough flavor, feel free to add in more.
Serve as is, or with soup. This recipe typically makes a lot of gomoku gohan. Feed your friends, family, coworkers, neigbors, acquaintances, and enemies with all your leftovers and tell them about my blog.