Buta Don is stir-fried pork seasoned with a soy sauce-based sauce over Steamed Rice. Strong soy-garlic flavor and plenty of fat from pork make this dish rich and fulfilling, and it is very easy to make. Buta Don is a great one-bowl dish for hungry teenagers (and anybody else!) who want to eat good food fast.
There are varieties of Buta Don dish in Japan, but the original seems like it started at a diner in Hokkaido in the 1930s. The owner of the diner created the pork bowl when pork was becoming more common to be consumed by people back then, and the dish became popular throughout Hokkaido area. Today, Buta Don is considered to be regional food there. And much later in the 2000s, national beef bowl chain stores picked up Buta Don for themselves as their alternative menu, and it became more widespread all over Japan. One restaurant in west Tokyo became particularly famous for Buta Don, though they call it Stamina Don. They use their secret sauce with garlic and developed a big boom for their Buta Don, expanding into chain stores which even went overseas.
We don’t have those stores’ secret sauces, but it was not that hard to make our own tasty recipe. Our version uses thinly sliced pork belly which is definitely fatty, but a more flavorful part of pork. If you’ watching calories, you can use other cuts, but still thinly sliced meat. The aroma of garlic can stimulate your appetite, and you may eat rice more than usual. Even when you’re not making for the whole family, you still may want to make double batch just in case you have plenty of this tasty meat.
It really doesn’t take much time to make Buta Don. If you set a timer for the rice cooker in the morning, you can eat this delicious pork bowl in 15 minutes after you come home from work. So try this one tomorrow!
Buta Don Recipe
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Ingredients
- 10 oz pork belly (or any cuts), thinly sliced 300 g
- 2-3 pinches salt
- 1/2 Tbsp Katakuriko potato starch
- 1 Tbsp Sake
- 1 green onion
- 1/4 brown onion
- 1/2 Tbsp oil
- 2-3 cups Steamed Rice
Instructions
- Cut pork into 2″ long pieces. Mix pork, salt, Katakuriko potato starch, and Sake, and set aside for 5-10 minutes.
- Chop green onion thinly. Slice brown onion thinly. Set aside.
- Mix all the ingredients for the sauce in a small bowl and stir until sugar dissolves.
- In a frying pan, heat oil at medium heat, add pork, and cook until lightly browed, breaking apart. Add brown onion and cook until soft. Pour the sauce in and cook for a couple of minutes, until the sauce is slightly thickened.
- Put Steamed Rice in a bowl and place pork over rice. Top with chopped green onion.
Video
