This Japanese fried rice bowl recipe with jammy eggs and karaage chicken makes a Japanese donburi or rice bowl dish of yakimeshi fried rice with bacon, egg and cabbage, topped with Japanese fried chicken or chicken karaage and soft jammy boiled eggs, and garnished with sliced spring onions and sesame seeds. It makes a fantastic filling weekend breakfast or mid-week lunch or dinner.
Like the Japanese fried rice recipe I shared yesterday for my take on Japanese fried rice, which I made with bacon, egg, cabbage, and quintessential Japanese ingredients, such as nori and mirin, this Japanese fried rice bowl recipe with jammy eggs and karaage chicken was another experiment with leftovers that turned out so well I turned it into a recipe.
It came about simply because we had some leftover Japanese fried rice plus some leftover karaage chicken, which was that crunchy Japanese fried chicken that Terence just shared a recipe for, which I combined with his wonderful soft-boiled jammy eggs to create a fantastic filling Japanese fried rice bowl recipe.
This Japanese fried rice bowl recipe with jammy eggs and karaage chicken is the latest recipe in our Weekend Eggs series of quintessential eggs dishes from around the world. If you’re visiting us for the first time, we started Weekend Eggs back in 2010 when we launched Grantourismo with a yearlong global grand tour aimed at promoting slow, local and experiential travel, more sustainable, ethical, engaging, and immersive forms of travel.
On that trip, we spent two weeks in each destination, staying in apartment rentals and holiday homes to get an insight into how locals lived their lives, and in each place we settled into, we explored the local food, connected with local cooks and chefs, and learnt to cook local specialties. We rebooted our Weekend Eggs series, for which Terence cooked local breakfast eggs dishes last year.
If you’re an eggs lover and particularly a lover of breakfast eggs dishes, do dig into our Weekend Eggs archive (link above) for inspiration and ideas or browse our collections of our 21 best breakfast recipes of 2021 and our all-time 12 most popular Weekend Eggs recipes in 12 years of Grantourismo, which we compiled as part of Grantourismo’s 12th birthday celebrations.
Now before I tell you about this Japanese fried rice bowl recipe with jammy eggs and karaage chicken, we have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes or other content on the site, please consider supporting Grantourismo. You could buy us a coffee and we’ll use that donation to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing or contribute to our epic original Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon.
Another option is to use our links to book accommodation, rent a car or campervan or motorhome, buy travel insurance, or book a tour on Klook or Get Your Guide. Or purchase something on Amazon, such as these James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, cookbooks for culinary travellers, travel books to inspire wanderlust, or gifts for Asian food lovers, picnic lovers and travellers who love photography. We may earn a small commission but you won’t pay extra.
You could also shop our Grantourismo store on Society6 for gifts for foodies, including fun reusable cloth face masks designed with Terence’s images. Now let’s tell you about this Japanese fried rice bowl recipe with jammy eggs and karaage chicken.
Japanese Fried Rice Bowl Recipe with Soft Jammy Eggs and Karaage Chicken
So before I share this Japanese fried rice bowl recipe with jammy eggs and karaage chicken, yes, it does seem that our completely unscheduled Japanese Food Week is continuing here on Grantourismo. If you’re not a lover of Japanese comfort food dishes hang in there, we’ve got a week of new recipes ahead for dishes from everywhere, from Thailand to Hungary.
If you’ve just dropped in: last weekend we shared recipes for tamago kake gohan for Japanese egg on rice – or TKG for the KFC generation – which makes a classic Japanese breakfast of raw egg stirred into piping-hot steamed Japanese rice, which can be customised, served simply with soy sauce and sesame oil, or sprinkled with spring onions, sesame seeds, furikake, bonito flakes, or roasted seaweed.
And, along with our recipes for Japanese fried chicken and Japanese fried rice, I also shared a recipe for a Japanese style cucumber and cabbage salad, which is actually the dish that inspired my Japanese fried rice experiments this week. Because as our regular readers know, I have a bit of an obsession with concocting new fried rice recipes from leftovers.
Because in between working on our Cambodian cookbook and culinary history, I’ve been developing a rice cookbook, which emerged from a ‘rice war’ that broke the internet and resulted in these stories: Make Rice Not War, A Celebration of Rice Diversity to Inspire Curiosity and Connection and How to Cook Rice Around the World: 66 Rice Dishes by 65 Rice Lovers. I have another fried rice dish scheduled for next week…
If you’ve enjoyed our recipes for Japanese comfort food dishes, particularly the recipes for donburi or rice bowl dishes, such as oyakodon, the Japanese ‘chicken and egg’ rice bowl, and katsudon, the pork cutlet and egg rice bowl, then you’re going to love this Japanese fried rice bowl recipe with jammy eggs and karaage chicken.
Tips to Making this Japanese Fried Rice Bowl Recipe with Jammy Eggs and Karaage Chicken
Just a few tips to making this Japanese fried rice bowl recipe with jammy eggs and karaage chicken as we’ve got a very detailed recipe for you below. But of course, if you cooked along with us and made our other Japanese recipes this week, then it’s just a matter of reheating leftovers, making jammy soft boiled eggs (following Terence’s excellent instructions for making perfect boiled eggs), and assembling them into a rice bowl.
Let’s start with the rice: do use Japanese rice if you can source it – if you can’t find it locally, you can buy it online – and definitely use a rice cooker to steam the rice. I find that two cups of rice makes enough for two people – one cup of rice per person – and is the perfect amount for a traditional Japanese donburi bowl.
As fried rice was invented to use up leftover rice, day-old steamed Japanese rice that’s been refrigerated is best for this dish. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it on the day. Just-cooked rice will go mushy if you attempt to stir-fry it while warm, but loosely spread it out over a large cold tray, and set it aside to cool, and it will be perfectly fine.
We like to fry our rice in our round flat bottomed wok, which is non-stick and light-weight. If you don’t have a wok, you really should get one. We’re going to publish a wok comparison post on the site very soon. Otherwise, use your favourite frying pan or skillet.
Along with Japanese rice, we like to stick with Japanese products for Japanese cooking. If you can’t source them locally, they’re all available online, such as this Japanese soy sauce, sesame oil, and shichimi togarashi, the Japanese 7 spice blend. Our Japanese fried rice bowl recipe calls for a mix of white sesame seeds and black sesame seeds, but you could always use your favourite furikake, Japanese seasoning.
Japanese Fried Rice Bowl Recipe with Jammy Eggs and Karaage Chicken
Ingredients
Fried Chicken
- 2 cm knob of ginger - , crushed
- 1 clove garlic - , crushed
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp sake
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1 tsp sugar
- 500 g chicken drumettes
- sea salt to taste
- black pepper - freshly ground, to taste
- ½ cup potato starch or corn starch
- vegetable oil - for deep frying
- 2 eggs
Fried Rice
- 2 cups Japanese rice - steamed
- 150 g white cabbage - shredded
- 6 scallions or spring onions - finely sliced – separate the green and white parts
- 2 tsp Japanese sesame oil
- 2 tsp Japanese soy sauce
- 2 tsp Japanese rice vinegar
- 1 tbsp black and white sesame seeds - half-half
- 1 tsp Shichimi Togarashi Japanese Seven Spice
- 2 tbsp soy bean oil
- 2 rashers bacon - , finely diced
- 2 eggs - , whisked
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 1 tsp sea salt - , optional
Instructions
- Begin with the fried chicken with the marinade: in a non-reactive mixing bowl, combine the crushed ginger and garlic, soy sauce, sake, sesame oil, sugar, and chicken drumettes, and set aside to marinate for 20 minutes.
- Start the rice: if you don’t have any day-old steamed Japanese rice in your fridge, steam 2 cups of rice in a rice cooker; when done, fluff up and transfer to a tray, spreading the rice out loosely to separate it.
- In a clean mixing bowl, combine the shredded cabbage, finely sliced white parts of the scallions/spring onions, sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame seeds, and Shichimi Togarashi, and set aside so the flavours meld and cabbage softens.
- Return to the chicken: spread the potato starch, salt and pepper out on a tray. Shake the marinade off the chicken to remove any ginger or garlic pieces. Roll the chicken in the potato starch mixture, ensuring all the pieces are fully coated before placing them in the fridge for an hour. If you have leftover potato starch apply it to the chicken as the chicken will absorb the potato starch.
- Put the eggs on to boil following these instructions so they are soft and jammy. Set a timer: the eggs should be done by the time you’ve finished the fried rice, when you can transfer them to a bowl of water (to stop the cooking process and so that they’re easier to peel).
- Fry the rice: in a wok over medium-high heat, heat the oil and fry the bacon until almost crispy, scoop it out and into a dish and set aside. Pour the seasoned shredded cabbage mix into the bacon oil and stir-fry until the cabbage softens, then add the steamed rice and continue to stir-fry until thoroughly combined and every bit of rice is coated in sauce.
- Push the fried rice to one side of the wok, pour the whisked eggs into the other side, scramble the eggs, then combine the egg and rice, return the bacon, add the white pepper and half the green scallions/spring onion slices and combine well. Taste and adjust the seasoning as you like, adding salt if needed. Turn the heat off and set aside.
- Finish the chicken: heat the oil in a deep fry pan or deep fryer to 165°C (330°F). Give the chicken pieces a light shake before adding them carefully to the oil. Do not crowd the pan; if the pan is small, cook in batches. Fry for around 2 minutes, after which the chicken should have a very light brown colour. Transfer them to a wire rack and repeat if needed until all the pieces of chicken have been cooked. Remove any loose pieces of coating from the deep fryer as these may burn at a higher heat.
- Increase the heat to 180°C (355°F) and re-fry the chicken pieces for a minute for each batch. The chicken should be a light golden brown with a crispy skin. Check that the chicken has reached 74°C (165°F) then transfer the pieces to the wire rack again.
- Assemble the dish: re-heat the fried rice by quickly stir-frying over high heat for a minute, distribute the between bowls; use tongs to transfer the chicken pieces; peel the eggs and arrange on top of the rice; and garnish with the remaining scallions/spring onions and a sprinkle of sesame seeds and serve immediately.
Nutrition
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make this Japanese fried rice bowl recipe with jammy eggs and karaage chicken as we’d love to know how it turns out for you.
