A Raw Egg Over Rice for Breakfast? So Comforting
Greatist * June 9, 2020
Have you ever had tamago kake gohan?” Tim asked.
Like millions of other people, we were inside on a Sunday morning, unable to meet friends for brunch or sit in our favorite local cafe for a weekend meal. To make up for lost moments, we whipped up dishes in Tim’s kitchen, experimenting with recipes we’d never tried before in an effort to not only add a little excitement to the day but to somewhat assuage the wanderlust travel bug.
“I used to make it for breakfast all the time,” Tim continued. “It’s really simple. Basically, you take leftover rice and mix it with raw egg yolk, a little soy sauce, and sesame seeds.”
Tamago kake gohan is sneaky in its simplicity. Sticky sushi rice — or in our case, leftover rice from another dish — is heated up until slightly tacky. Over this bowl of rice, crack open an egg and drop the raw yolk (or whole egg) on top of the rice.
Add a dash of soy sauce to taste and then dust the whole thing with as many sesame seeds as you like. Whip the mix around with a fork and dig in.
“Did you add butter? It tastes buttery,” I asked.
“Nope. That’s the yolk and the sesame seeds,” Tim said.
The history of tamago kake gohan
Intrigued to try to learn more about this dish, I discovered that for something that only has three ingredients, its history and versatility are decidedly more complex.
According to Tofugu, a Japanese language learning site, Japan’s first war reporter, Ginko Kishida (1833 to 1905), is credited for popularizing this dish. In true culinary creativity, he dumped a raw egg or two on top of rice and loved it so much that he began urging everyone he met to try the dish.
“It’s one of my favorite dishes. This is something I grew up with, and sometimes the simplest dishes are the best,” says Wakana Sebacher, who opened Tamashii Ramen House, a Japanese soul food restaurant in Oklahoma City with her husband. “At one point, tomago kake gohan became trendy, and that’s when the specialty soy sauces came. But, really, you can use any high quality soy sauce.”
But according to many, it’s the special soy sauces that make the dish. The original sauce is known as “Otamahan,” and was created in a village, now known as Yoshida Town Unnan City in Shimane prefecture in 2002. It’s sweeter and more mellow than the soy sauce you might be used to. Japan now boasts of more than 50 different tamago kake gohan specific soy sauces.
“It’s always the first dish I eat when I go back to Japan,” says Sebacher. “It hasn’t been popular in America, because of the raw egg. But, if you haven’t tried it, you’ll be surprised how good it is.”
