What makes a good 'Beef-Bowl'?

[Redcoffin]

And where can I find a good one in the USA?

This question stems from two facts: (1) practically every anime show I have ever seen, even sci fi or samurai epics, has some people gathering at a beef-bowl shop or yearning for a good beef-bowl. (Urusei Yatsura references beef-bowl about once every three episodes, I think. Gotta be a record.) So what's a beef bowl?

(2) I have found that most so-called "Japanese Restaurants" in the USA are just dressed up sushi-bars, and if you order anything except sushi you are going to get crap and not much of it. The working-class Japanese food just doesn't appear on their menus.

If you're in california:
http://www.yoshinoyausa.com/about.html

I haven't tried one in the US, but I've heard its not the same as Japan, but then Japan has that mad cow disease ban going on.

[Vertical_Ed]

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Hiyo_2366 said:
And where can I find a good one in the USA?

This question stems from two facts: (1) practically every anime show I have ever seen, even sci fi or samurai epics, has some people gathering at a beef-bowl shop or yearning for a good beef-bowl. (Urusei Yatsura references beef-bowl about once every three episodes, I think. Gotta be a record.) So what's a beef bowl?

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The secret to beef bowl is the combination of beef and onions on rice. But the beauty of this dish is cheap beef served up fast. It fills you up and you feel special cause your eating beef! Add a raw egg, some potato salad on the side maybe miso soup and you have a complete meal for almost nothing!

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(2) I have found that most so-called "Japanese Restaurants" in the USA are just dressed up sushi-bars, and if you order anything except sushi you are going to get crap and not much of it. The working-class Japanese food just doesn't appear on their menus.

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I guess this depends on the community you are in. In the San Francisco area beef bowls are found quite a bit, but many of them are not very good. Actually the only places in the area that do it justice, even better than in some of the more hardcore traditional Japanese places like Takara in Peace Plaza, are in Berkeley. Some people are stingy with the beef and others tend to make it too fancy and it is no longer tradtional beef bowl= big bowl of sliced fatty beef, yellow onions and rice for almost nothing. Yeah sometimes you get a bad tired college student as the chef and the taste is eh. But even in Yoshinoya the king of Japanese beef bowl you might not get the best at 11:00p, right. That is what beef bowl is about to me though. And whenever I was poor in Japan (from spending too much on video games and manga) I lived off of Yoshinoya and Coco wa Ichiban-Curry! Truly god's country!

[badasscat]

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Hiyo_2366 said:
And where can I find a good one in the USA?


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Well I think this might depend on how you define "good"... it's sort of like asking "where can I get a good cheeseburger in Japan?" You can probably get a beef bowl a lot of places, but are you looking for authenticity? Quality? Expensive ingredients? Or just the best taste for your western taste buds, regardless of whether it's something a Japanese person would actually eat?

[ QUOTE ]

This question stems from two facts: (1) practically every anime show I have ever seen, even sci fi or samurai epics, has some people gathering at a beef-bowl shop or yearning for a good beef-bowl. (Urusei Yatsura references beef-bowl about once every three episodes, I think. Gotta be a record.) So what's a beef bowl?


[/ QUOTE ]

Beef, onions, rice and soy sauce, basically. You can add red pepper, pickled ginger, egg and other things to it if you want. Yes, as someone else said, it's usually made with cheap, fatty beef. This is basically fast food in Japan.

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(2) I have found that most so-called "Japanese Restaurants" in the USA are just dressed up sushi-bars, and if you order anything except sushi you are going to get crap and not much of it. The working-class Japanese food just doesn't appear on their menus.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well it probably depends on where you are - there are a whole lot of "working-class" type Japanese restaurants in major US cities like New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles, and there are even Yoshinoyas in a lot of US cities (there's a couple in NYC, but I don't think those are the only ones). Yoshinoya is the largest purveyor of beef bowls - they may have even originated it (not sure, honestly, but this is not a traditional Japanese dish as far as I know). So you may be able to find a beef bowl if you're close to a big city.

(I don't think not having a beef bowl on the menu, though, really disqualifies a restaurant from being authentic Japanese, anymore than not having a Big Mac on the menu disqualifies a restaurant from being authentic American.)

If you want to know something interesting, Yoshinoya in Japan does not even serve beef bowls anymore. At least not right now. They can't import American beef and I guess domestic beef is too expensive (yes, Yoshinoya's beef bowls were made with American beef, even in Japan).

You can make your own beef bowl pretty easily just by boiling up some rice, stewing some fatty, thinly-sliced beef and onions in diluted soy sauce (I couldn't tell you the exact recipe, but it's obviously not full strength), and then dumping it on top of the rice in a bowl. If you want, you can add a raw egg, though I'm not really into this part. I usually do without the ginger too, although I do like the red pepper.

[Purple_X]

I find the secret is to add a shot of Sake to the brew.

The best Beef Bowl in USA is the one you make yourself. It's not hard to make. you make a brew of soy sauce, mirin, sugar, sake; boil onions in thie brew for about 15m, then add very thinly sliced beef (may need to go to an Asian grocery to get the right cut) and cook for about 30 seconds.

[GanChan]

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Purple_X said:
I find the secret is to add a shot of Sake to the brew.

The best Beef Bowl in USA is the one you make yourself. It's not hard to make. you make a brew of soy sauce, mirin, sugar, sake; boil onions in thie brew for about 15m, then add very thinly sliced beef (may need to go to an Asian grocery to get the right cut) and cook for about 30 seconds.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds like most any cheap, thin cut might work.

Finding the mirin is probably the tricky part, unless you live near an Asian grocery. I think you can "fake" mirin, but i forget how.

[Donovan]

So should there be any liquid left in the end, and if so how thick is it? Or does the beef soak it up?

[badasscat]

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Donovan said:
So should there be any liquid left in the end, and if so how thick is it? Or does the beef soak it up?

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There is some liquid left. It shouldn't be a soup but it should wet your rice a bit. It's not very thick but it's not water either.

I do not believe Yoshinoya uses any alcohol products in their beef bowls (they certainly don't here), but it may taste better if you do for all I know.

[hideyuki]

Yoshinoya uses wine (ordinary wine made from grapes, not Sake) in their beef bowls.
They mention that they changed that recipe in Malaysia for religious reasons:
http://www.yoshinoya-dc.com/recruit/member/voice/member_06.html

Generally speaking, Sake and mirin is more commonly used in rice bowls though.

[shadowspawn]

The Japanese perspective is: no Mad Cow in it makes it a good Beef Bowl....

[Purple_X]

It's liquid, but the sugar thickens it a little. You usualy take a spoonful or two of the liquid when you put on top of rice

You can fake Mirin with Equal parts Sake and Sugar, but it really isn't the same. Mirin is not all that hard to find. Japanese Soy Sause (Which is not the same as the regular bottled made-in-the-usa kikkoman readily available here) is about as hard.

[Skywise]

What is the difference between kikkoman and japanese soy sauce then?

[Purple_X]

The genreal difference between Chinese and a Japanese Soy Sauce is brewing time and additives. I actualy meant to say that Kikkoman in the US has two soy sauce products, the available-everywhere bottled made in the usa and imported japanese (labeled �ょ�ゆ) which is harder to find but not uncommon.

This page (http://www.answers.com/topic/soy-sauce) Talks a bit about the differences between Chinese and Japanese soy sauce

The ingredients list on a USA made bottle is different to the imported japanese and also has a different taste to the Japanese one. I can't quiet describe the difference in taste; but it's different enough that I don't substitute the two. Kikkoman-europe implies that the Soy Sauce made in Europe is the same as the japanese product.

The Kikkoman made in Japan contains only soybeans, wheat, water and salt.

[Skywise]

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Purple_X said:
The Kikkoman made in Japan contains only soybeans, wheat, water and salt.

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That's what the kikkoman in the fridge here says. From the labelling it seems it's imported from Singapore before being sold here. What's in the US "version" that makes it so different?

[Purple_X]

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Skywise said:
That's what the kikkoman in the fridge here says. From the labelling it seems it's imported from Singapore before being sold here. What's in the US "version" that makes it so different?

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yeah, Kikkoman-Eurorpe has a Faq that says that the soy sauce made in Singapore and the Netherlands is all Natural japanese style. I can't find the ingredient list on the USA made stuff (and I am no longer in the USA to check either) but I remember it to be substantially different.

[mrgazpacho]

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Skywise said:
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Purple_X said:
The Kikkoman made in Japan contains only soybeans, wheat, water and salt.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's what the kikkoman in the fridge here says. From the labelling it seems it's imported from Singapore before being sold here. What's in the US "version" that makes it so different?

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I suspect there:s an issue with the fermentation method - possibly the Japanese stuff must be naturally-fermented, while other stuff may be accelerated with heat or pressure or something.

[Donovan]

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Skywise said:
What's in the US "version" that makes it so different?

[/ QUOTE ]The link given above mentions the Japanese version being less salty. I recently tried making a not-even-remotely-authentic beef bowl using the US version and it did taste too salty.

I will say, while my beef bowl wasn't close to being authentic it did give me the same sense of a hearty, simple dish like the real thing. It also makes it more clear why anime girls get offended when the guy suggests going to a beef bowl shop for their date. /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif

[jmarken]

[ QUOTE ]
Skywise said:
[ QUOTE ]
Purple_X said:
The Kikkoman made in Japan contains only soybeans, wheat, water and salt.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's what the kikkoman in the fridge here says. From the labelling it seems it's imported from Singapore before being sold here. What's in the US "version" that makes it so different?

[/ QUOTE ]

The Kikkoman in our kitchen (you keep yours in the fridge?) says:

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Ingredients: water, wheat, soybeans, salt, sodium benzoate: less than 1/10 of 1% as a preservative. Brewed by Kikkoman Foods, Inc., Walworth, WI 53184, USA

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So I guess the sodium benzoate is the difference?

[Donovan]

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jmarken said:
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Ingredients: water, wheat, soybeans, salt, sodium benzoate: less than 1/10 of 1% as a preservative. Brewed by Kikkoman Foods, Inc., Walworth, WI 53184, USA

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So I guess the sodium benzoate is the difference?

[/ QUOTE ]Just because they have the same ingredients doesn't mean they have them in the same proportions. As mentioned above, there seems to be more salt in the American version.

[lyndaf]

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Purple_X said:
I can't quiet describe the difference in taste; but it's different enough that I don't substitute the two.


[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I find the Japanese kikkoman inadequate when paired with Chinese food (it's great with Japanese food). The American brewed kikkoman is stronger in flavor.

I'm not sure I'd make an across the board claim that Japanese soy sauce is less salty. In our side by side blind tastings of soy sauce, I've had some from-Japan Japanese soy sauce that was much saltier than some of the from-China Chinese soy sauce. It probably depends on the brand.

L

[wanfu2k1]

Yeah it depends on the brand and where it was brewed. Some of the soy sauces actually taste sweet.