Salmon and Dashi Takikomi Gohan Using Brown Rice 炊き込みご飯

No fuss rice cooker recipe, especially hassle-free for people who doesn't want to deal with greasy kitchen in the end.

This time I'm using brown rice and homemade Japanese stock. However, if you would like to skip the stock making process, simply add some Japanese dashi powder instead, can't be easier than that.

Salmon and dashi takikomi gohan using brown rice -

Ingredients (about 6 portions)?

• 4 rice measuring cups brown rice
• 2 or about 440 grams salmon fillets
• 700ml Japanese dashi (or use some dashi powder instead)
• 1 medium fried bean curd skin 油豆腐皮
• 1/4 cup hijiki
• 1 small bundle or about 250 grams Japanese mustard spinach コマツナ
• 1 medium carrot
• 1 pack or about 100 grams brown beech mushroom
• 2 tablespoons Japanese tsuyu

How?

Rinse the brown rice, basically just like how you would prepare the rice usually. Once ready, drain and set aside first. 

You can make the Japanese dashi from scratch by soaking the kombu and katsuobushi in water. I have an old post Japanese fried tofu pouch and beef udon, from there you will find more details on how to make Japanese dashi.

However, if it seems too troublesome, simply add some Japanese dashi powder to warm water instead, or use any sort of already made Japanese stock.

Add 2 tablespoons of Japanese tsuyu to the rice then pour in dashi till it reaches about 3.5 cups measurement inside the rice cooker pot. Mine was about 700ml. Give it a quick mix. Set aside while prepping other ingredients.

It's important to soak the rice first especially we are using brown rice. Otherwise the grains can be too tough or not fully cooked through in the end if skipping the soaking time.

Double making sure there are no bones hidden somewhere inside the salmon. Remove the skin before use.

Either use hot water to rinse the fried bean curd skin or soak in hot water for a short moment. This will help drawing out excess oil from the tofu skin. Once ready, squeeze out the liquid then cut into strips.

Peel and cut the carrot to strips, like julienne the carrot, but it doesn't have to be too thin. Trim-off the mushroom ends then separate to individual pieces. Destem the Japanese mustard spinach and cut to shorter sections. You can use bok choy instead or other similar Asian leafy greens.

Transfer prepped ingredients to the rice cooker. I would add the carrot first then leafy greens last, putting bean curd strips, hijiki, and mushroom in between.

There is no need to mix the ingredients with rice. Mostly because we are using brown rice, so I prefer to keep the rice on the bottom, suppose to get fully cooked-through more easily that way.

On the very top, transfer salmon fillets over.

Press that button on the rice cooker and simply cook away. If you have a specific setting for takikomi gohan, choose that instead.

Once ready, remove the inner pot from the rice cooker.

Remove the fish fillets. Fluff the rice and make sure all the ingredients are evenly blended together.

Roughly break the salmon into large chunks then add back to the rice mixture. Just give it a few gentle mix again. The salmon rice should be ready to serve.

Remember not to over-mix the rice once adding back the fish. We are aiming for chunky salmon texture, so over-mixing can cause the salmon to break into tiny pieces instead, not good.

Other takikomi gohan recipes:

• Pork bamboo shoot and shiitake takikomi gohan
• Chicken and gobo takikomi gohan (鶏ごぼうの炊き込みご飯)
• Japanese hijiki no takikomi gohan ひじきの炊き込みご飯