Teriyaki and Ginger Minced Beef Donburi Bowl

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If you are looking for an incredibly quick and simple supper that is exploding with layers of flavour, this Teriyaki and Ginger Minced Beef Donburi Bowl has got your name on it. Delicious served with rice, I also like to serve a green salad with an Asian salad dressing on the side. Put some rice on to cook and then prepare the Teriyaki Minced Beef – it should all be ready at the same time. Supper on the table in 20 minutes, yes please!

Whilst this may not be a classical Japanese dish, the Teriyaki sauce itself, is very traditional, so the flavours are very authentic. This dish also works beautifully with minced chicken or pork

What are Donburi Bowls?

Donburi recipes, or Rice Bowls, always start with a bowl of steaming fluffy rice served with a variety of toppings including meat, fish, vegetables and often a sauce which soaks into, and deliciously flavours, the rice below. Hugely popular in Japan and easy to prepare at home, this concept lends itself well to many adaptations and is ideal when using seasonal food and flexible enough to ensure you can use food you have available at home. Donburi really is the ultimate Japanese comfort food.

What is Teriyaki Sauce?

There’s a good reason Teriyaki is one of Japan’s most well known sauces – it is a totally delicious sweet, salty, sticky, shiny, sauce which packs a huge flavour punch with layers of unami. Even better, it is very quick to make! 

Teriyaki is a sweet sauce made with:

• soy sauce
• cooking sake, and
• mirin, (a sweet sake used in cooking).

There are many pre-made versions widely available in most supermarkets. They do vary however, and some can be far too sweet, so I much prefer to make my own. The ingredients should all be available in large supermarkets and most definitely in Asian supermarkets. I know I can get everything I need at Ocado. Alternatively, try on line. The Japan Centre has a good selection of ingredients and delivers over the whole of the UK.

Where is the Teriyaki Sauce recipe from?

This Teriyaki sauce recipe is very, very slightly adapted from Nagi’s recipe in Recipe Tin Eats. The only difference is that I add a tiny bit of sugar to mine. Nagi grew up in Australia after her Japanese parents immigrated there in the 1980s and I believe her recipes are very authentic.

Interestingly her mum, Yumiko, also has a fabulous blog called Recipe Tin Japan. Her Teriyaki recipe, when served with salmon, has no added sugar whilst her recipe for Teriyaki when served with chicken, has more sugar than mine. So when it comes to added sugar, the only right answer is you choose according to your own palate! Mirin, one of the 3 main ingredients, is naturally quite sweet anyway, so you may prefer not to add any extra. However, if you are used to pre-made versions, which tend to be very sweet, you may find you like some added sweetness.

Alternative Recipes

When my daughters went off to university, I used to make a batch of Teriyaki Sauce for them to take. They would remind me that not everybody has such well stocked cupboards or, indeed, access to the correct ingredients. I am therefore sharing 2 additional copycat recipes using predominantly western ingredients. I am assuming that if you are interested in Japanese food, you are likely to have some soy sauce! Either of these recipes can directly replace the original one and are used in exactly the same way. The quantities are shown in the ‘Recipe Notes’ below.

Alternative recipe 1 –

This one is very similar to the original, although a little sweeter. When reducing the number of traditional ingredients you lose a level of the magical unami. The added sweetness is to compensate for this.

Ingredients:

• soy sauce – I use Kikkoman, salt reduced. Try to use Japanese soy sauce. If you only have light soy sauce, that will work at a push, but do not use dark soy sauce. It is too strong.
• port – I use supermarket port I buy for cooking. You do not need expensive aged port
• water
• runny honey

Alternative recipe 2 –

This recipe was inspired by a recipe I saw on @chopsticksandapint. Alice shared a recipe from her mother using coca cola and soy sauce. It was not a teriyaki copycat but I thought it was a tremendous idea and tried it out with different proportions until I was happy with the result. This is the sweetest of the options above, as the coca cola brings a lot of sweetness, but it has the added benefit of using extremely accessible ingredients and is also alcohol free.

• coca cola – full sugar, classic coca cola
• soy sauce – I use Kikkoman, salt reduced
• water
• runny honey

How to make Teriyaki and Ginger Minced Beef Donburi Bowl

Collect all your ingredients together:

• sesame oil
• vegetable oil
• onion
• garlic
• ginger
• minced beef

For the sauce –

• salt reduced soy sauce (I use Kikkoman)
• cooking sake
• mirin, (a sweet sake used in cooking)
• water

To serve:

• cooked Japanese rice, or your favourite rice
• sliced spring onion
• sesame seeds
• wedges of fresh lime
• green salad with an Asian dressing (See Recipe Notes)

Now, quickly whip this up:

1. Finely chop the onion, garlic and ginger. I do this in the food processor.
2. Heat the oil over a moderate heat and add the vegetables. Cook, stirring form time to time, for 5 minutes, until softened.
3. As the onion cooks, mix all the ingredients together for the teriyaki sauce.
4. Add the minced beef to the pan and brown. This will take around 5 minutes.
5. Pour in the Teriyaki sauce and cook for around 5 minutes, allowing the sauce to reduce and thicken to cover the meat.
6. Serve over plain, steamed rice, garnished with sliced spring onions, sesame seeds and wedges of lime. I also like to serve a green salad dressed in an Asian style salad dressing on the side

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Made this recipe?

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