What is omurice?
The name joins the English words omelette and rice. Omurice belongs to yoshoku cuisine, the dishes that Japanese cooks have developed since the late 19th century on Western models, like curry rice or hayashi rice. One restaurant in Tokyo and one in Osaka both claim to have invented it. Today you find omurice in family restaurants and cafés, and at home you cook it as a quick dinner. Rice omelet and omurice mean the same dish.
The right ingredients
- Rice: Use cooked Japanese short-grain rice from the day before. Cold rice breaks into single grains in the pan and takes up the ketchup, while fresh rice clumps. For 350 g of cooked rice, cook about 150 g of raw rice. The basics are under cooking rice.
- Chicken: Chicken thighs stay juicier than breast. Cut the meat into 1 cm cubes, and it is done before the rice burns.
- Ketchup: In Japan, cooks use ordinary tomato ketchup. For more depth, add 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce or tonkatsu sauce.
- Eggs: You need two eggs per omelet. A tablespoon of milk makes the egg softer.
How to make the omelet
For the omelet, use a nonstick pan 20 to 24 cm in diameter. In larger pans the egg spreads too thin and tears when you fold it. Beat the eggs until no streaks of egg white are visible. Pour them into the oil over medium heat and draw them from the outside toward the center for a few seconds with chopsticks or a spatula. As soon as the underside is set and the top still glistens, add the rice.
The card folds the omelet over the rice as a half-moon. For the familiar shape from Japanese restaurants, put the rice in the middle as a long roll, fold both sides over it and turn the omurice out onto the plate seam side down. Lay a kitchen towel over it and shape it into an oval with your hands. Then the ketchup goes on in a line or a zigzag.
Common mistakes
- Pan too hot: The egg turns brown and tough. Japanese omurice has a smooth, yellow surface.
- Mushy rice: Too much ketchup at once soaks the rice. You can fry the ketchup in the pan for a minute first, so the water evaporates and it tastes rounder.
- Lukewarm filling: Keep the rice warm in the pan while you cook the omelet.
Variations
- Tampopo omurice: You cook a thicker omelet that is runny inside, set it on the rice as a roll and cut it open lengthwise. It falls open and covers the rice. A Tokyo restaurant developed this version for the 1985 film Tampopo.
- With brown sauce: Instead of ketchup, pour a demi-glace over the omelet, as with hayashi rice.
- Vegetarian: Replace the chicken with mushrooms and diced firm tofu. Fry the mushrooms until they release no more water.
What to serve with it
In Japan, omurice often comes with a small salad with sesame dressing or a miso soup. If you like rice with egg, also try oyakodon, where chicken and egg cook together in a sweet broth. From Malaysia comes nasi goreng pattaya, fried rice with chili in an omelet wrapper. For a rolled omelet without rice, cook tamagoyaki.
