Takikomi Gohan (Mixed Browned Rice)
Author: 
Recipe type: Side Dish
 
Ingredients
  • 2 cups brown rice
  • 1 small chicken thigh (or ½ chicken breast)
  • ¼ konnyaku
  • ⅓ carrot
  • 2 dried shiitake mushrooms
  • 2 pieces of gobo (each 1½ inches long)
  • 2 tablespoons shoyu (soy sauce)
  • 1 tablespoon mirin (sweet sake)
  • 1 tablespoon cooking sake
  • 2¼ cup water (total, including reserved mushroom liquid) - according to your rice cooker's measurement
Instructions
  1. Wash brown rice until water runs clear.  Drain, and let stand for 30 minutes.
  2. Use 1 cup warm water to reconstitute dried shiitake mushrooms.  Let soak for about 15 minutes until the mushrooms are tender.  Reserve the soaking liquid.  Trim stalk, discard and slice cap lengthwise into thick strips.
  3. Slice konnyaku block horizontally and then slice each piece into smaller rectangular pieces.
  4. Cut chicken into small bite-sized pieces.
  5. Slice carrots horizontally and then cut each slice into quarters, making "little triangle shapes", as my mom would say.
  6. Remove the skin of the gobo by running the blade down the gobo in a downward sweeping motion.  It's almost like scraping the skin off.  Sweep the blade away from you.
  7. Only peel about 3 - 4 inches of the gobo and cut off the peeled portion.  Cut this into 2 pieces about 1½ inches long.  Then slice each piece lengthwise into thin matchstick-sized pieces.  Soak in water until you're ready to put them in the rice cooker.
  8. Excluding the chicken, the chopped vegetables (shiitake, gobo, carrots, and konnyaku) combined should be about ¾ cup.
  9. Add all of the chopped ingredients into the rice cooker, including the raw chicken.  There are some recipes that suggest these ingredients be cooked prior to adding them to the rice, but all of the ingredients cook inside the rice cooker and meld all of the flavors together.
  10. In a separate bowl, measure out the reserved mushroom liquid (1 cup), plus 1¼ cup water, plus shoyu, mirin and sake.
  11. Pour all of the liquid ingredients into the rice cooker and cook rice as you normally would.
  12. Because the vegetables increase the amount of liquid in the rice cooker as it cooks, the takikomi gohan will be a bit stickier than white rice.  If you prefer takikomi gohan that is less sticky, consider using only 2 cups of water, but depending on your rice cooker you may end up with rice that is hard.  You might need to experiment a bit.
Recipe by Bebe Love Okazu at https://bebeloveokazu.com/2010/04/14/takikomi-gohan-mixed-rice/