Time: 3/5
About an hour from start to finish, with some downtime in between to do some cleaning

Effort: 3/5
Frying eggplants is an involved process

In the mood for miso

There’s something magical about simmering thinly sliced meat and onions in a sauce of dashi, soy sauce and mirin. There’s so much savouriness, sweetness and meatiness (of course) going on, as well as plenty of delicious sauce to spoon over rice. The fact that it cooks so quickly because the meat is sliced thin is just another bonus.

While Gyudon is the best known manifestation of this rice bowl template (which I’ve done before; a classic for a reason), its porky cousin is no slouch when it comes to being a comforting meal, whether it be wolfed down at a restaurant or as a quick and easy weeknight dinner.

Butadon translates roughly to Pork Rice Bowl. The don in this case stands for donburi or rice bowl, and Buta for pork – notice the parallels with Gyudon. Like the beef rice bowl, it’s a simple and satisfying recipe that lends itself well to scaling up. The limiting factor of the size of your batch would be how much food you can fit in your pan and still be able to stir without it spilling over. As such, these are staples in my meal-prep rotation.

The version I’m making here is an attempt at creating a copycat version of an eggplant and miso butadon I had at a restaurant, which blew me away the first time I had it. Fried eggplants have a wonderful meaty texture (and are amazing on their own), and of course you know how I love miso. The battle was pretty much won before it began.

Here’s where cooking as a hobby starts to feel like a superpower. Once you get reasonably close to being able to recreate a restaurant meal, you get to have that dining out experience without spending so much of your hard earned money. This is especially the case at more casual places where you go simply to be fed, rather than for a fine dining experience. You’ll be surprised how much you can do in a home kitchen!

So after several sub-par but nevertheless edible tries, here I am with a version that I’m happy with, which allows me to blow a mental raspberry whenever I pass by that particular restaurant and think to myself with some measure of pride, “No big deal, I can make that at home!”

Dramatis Personae

Pork – I used about 1200g of thinly sliced pork shoulder, which ended up as 7 portions

Pork belly is the classic choice and tastes better, hands down. But I like to reserve pork belly as a special indulgence, and go with pork shoulder instead for day-to-day cooking. It still has plenty of fat to keep it juicy, but it’s lean enough that I can spend my calorie quota elsewhere.

Pork and beef is sold pre-sliced and frozen for hotpot where I live, so all the prep I needed to do was to defrost and unwrap – that in itself is half the magic. If you must slice it by hand, blanch your meat briefly and stick it in the freezer for half an hour or so to make the job easier.

Sauce

This begins with sautéed onions, which give the sauce a nice sweetness and aroma. A bit of garlic would also work well.

Light miso is more versatile in application than other types of miso, and makes a useful pantry addition. I used about a teaspoon per serving, mixed with soy sauce, dashi and sake to form a thin slurry. This slurry gets added to the onions.

You’ll have to taste and adjust the sauce towards the end. More soy sauce for salinity? Sugar to sweeten it? A tiny bit of rice wine vinegar? Do you want it thicker and more like a coating on the pork, or do you want to thin it out with water to spoon over your rice? Your call.

Garnishes

Pretty food tastes better, but on this particular night I’m more concerned with making a decently tasting meal after a long day at work than making it look pretty. A home cook has priorities and has to make sacrifices, after all.

I have a shaker filled with sesame seeds and a bottle of shichimi in my pantry, which I have found to be great low-effort, high-reward ways to add a bit of visual interest to my meals. But given the time and energy, I might have also topped the rice bowl with something brightly coloured to perk it up. Perhaps thin slivers of fresh chilis, or a piece or two of pickled radishes. Maybe a scattering of finely minced scallions or chives.

Vegetables

Always eat your veggies! Use whatever is available to you. In general, sturdier vegetables would work better in this application. I used eggplant because that was what was in the dish I am trying to imitate used. The restaurant served it with raw shredded cabbage, but I’m not used to raw vegetables so I’m going to give my cabbage a quick stir fry.

Executive summary

1. Get rice cooking. Shred and cook cabbage with some salt.
2. While waiting for the cabbage to cook, slice the onions and the eggplant. Prepare the miso sauce slurry.
3. Reserve the cooked cabbage and wipe the pan clean. Heat up a generous amount of oil and fry the eggplants.
4. Reserve the eggplants. Fry the onions until lightly browned, then add the pork slices along with the sauce slurry.
5. Stir to combine and simmer gently, adding a bit of water to help it cook if needed.
6. Taste and adjust the sauce to your liking.
7. Assemble and serve.

Play by Play

Last things first. I only have one big pan in which I have to do everything, so I’m cooking the cabbage before the pan gets dirty so the vegetables can act as a clean-tasting counterpoint to the dish. If you are confident in working with two pans at once, you can do this step in parallel to the main pork-and-onion job.

I’ve given the cabbage some char, which I swear is deliberate and not because I was too absentminded to stir. In any case, charred cabbage is delicious and I’m happy with the result. The vegetables are very lightly seasoned, because the pork will be plenty flavourful.

This is as close to the taste of Japan in a bottle as you can get – it’s a dashi and soy sauce concentrate, and it’s a great shortcut to great weeknight dinners. Of course, you can get the same results with powdered dashi and soy sauce, but I just love keeping this super handy cheat code in my pantry.

Mix up the miso with some of the dashi and soy sauce. You’ll probably need more liquid later, but you can always adjust. It’s important to disperse the miso particles now, because there’s no way you can do it in the big pan with all the other ingredients.

Multitasking on prep while the cabbage is accidentally charring in the pan. I cut my eggplant into batons, in emulation of the restaurant dish.

Half the reason why this dish is so great. Eggplant fried in oil have a wonderful meaty texture to them. The key is to be generous with the oil, and to blast the pan with high heat. You’ll see the oil disappear as it gets absorbed by the eggplant, but persevere and you shall be rewarded. As the eggplants fry, they will release the oil back out.

Drain excess oil from frying the eggplants, and dump the onions in. They’ll cook quickly in the residual heat. Once the onions have wilted and slightly browned, add the pork slices and the miso slurry. Adjust the liquid level and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally. While the pan is simmering, divide up the rice and vegetables and do some cleaning.

Here we are. Stop when all the pink is gone, because the meat can get tough if you overcook it. I added more dashi and soy sauce, and a tiny bit of sugar to the sauce. I left it brothy because my SO likes plenty of sauce, but you could use a corn starch slurry to thicken it if you like. Eggplant shrinks considerably after cooking, which is why they got lost in the mass of pork. I would have doubled the amount of eggplant, but that would mean frying in two batches and aint nobody got time for that.

Dinner, and lunch, and lunch. That little sprinkle of sesame seeds is a really simple thing to do, but it adds a lot of visual appeal to what would otherwise be a pretty homogenous pile of brown.

One of those meals that suits both the lazy eater and the lazy cook – no bones, no knife, just spoon in mouth and chew. Itadakimasu~

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