Mushroom Rice - Japanese Style

What have I been up to these days?

Playing Scrabble with my mom (on both weekdays and weekends!). I'm not kidding you. We love this game and can play it till hours in the morning if my little princess didn't protest that mommy should join her on her bed. O_o

So I am trying to come up with easy and prepare ahead meals.

Right now my rice cooker is furiously cooking away my latest experiment of Mushroom Rice, while I am sipping iced tea surfing the Internet. The recipe is completely different from my previous Mushroom Rice, which was the creamy sort. This recipe came from one of the Japanese cookbooks I lugged back 2 trips ago and I still haven't even finish trying 10 recipes from it! Tsk, tsk, tsk ... So now I still have to choose another 8 more recipes to try (I'll tried 1 of its recipe some time ago)!

Note to Cousin C: I hope that this one works and you can prepare and bring this to work for lunch!

Note to anyone who is trying this recipe: From my experience, the ingredients listed are usually the very minimal to accompany the rice. Japanese are frugal people, I suppose. So what I did was that I kept the amount the rice as 3 cups, but I double the remaining ingredients (in this case the mushrooms and the meat). Of cos, if you do that please also adjust the cooking liquid accordingly so that you don't end up with undercooked rice. I think we all can live with porridge, right?

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Mushroom Rice
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3 cups of rice (each cup measures 180ml)
150g mushroom (a mix of oyster, enoki and/or any kind of fresh mushrooms available)
6 pcs shiitake
150g sliced pork
1 1/2 cups dashi stock (here's a quick guide to making dashi)
2 tbsp sake
3 tbsp soy sauce
2-3 stalks spring onions, chopped for garnishing, optional


1. Cut mushrooms and sliced pork up to bite size.

2. Put the mushrooms and sliced pork into a pot and cover with dashi stock. Just add enough to cover.

3. Bring to boil and add the sake and soy sauce. Simmer for 8 mins.

4. Strain the mushrooms and meat. Reserve the cooking liquid.

5. Wash the rice in rice cooker and add the cooking liquid into the rice cooker. Here is the test of your rice cooking skill: Estimate if the amount of cooking liquid is enough to cook the rice. If insufficient, add water.

6. Switch the rice cook to Regular/Normal cooking cycle. (No quick cooking here!)

7. When the rice is cooked, add the mushrooms and meat into the rice cooker and stir well to combine. Scoop into bowls and sprinkle chopped spring onions, if desired.

~ Enjoy! ~


Footnote: The Mushroom Rice was very flavourful. Much like our version of claypot rice. Mine turned out mushy as I added too much cooking liquid. Well, at least my little girl liked it enough to finish her bowl.