I always thought of chawan mushi as one of those special dishes that you only had on special occasions. I’m not sure where I got that idea from except that I’m certain my mom only made it for New Years and only when we had guests over.
When I first started making it on my own, I was surprised at how easy it was to make and that it wasn’t as difficult as my mom made it out to sound. I was also hesitant to start making it because I didn’t have a fancy chawan mushi set and I didn’t know what I would put it in. And then one day, I wanted to eat it so much that I used a regular ceramic rice bowl. I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner because it works just fine.
Ingredients (2 servings)
1 egg
200 ml of dashijiru
2 shrimp with the shells removed and devained
4 small pieces of chicken
4 mitsuba
4-6 ginnan
4 slices of kamaboko
1 shitake mushroom
Directions
1) Make the dashijiru first and chill it. I use ichiban dashi but a lot of other recipes say that nibandashi is good enough.
2) Crack and egg and mix it gently with chopsticks and break it up by cutting it with the chopsticks.
3) Prep the other ingredients. Remove the shells from the shrimp but leave the tail on. (It looks nicer that way). Clean and devein the shrimp.
4) Blanch the stems from the mitsuba holding on to the leaves with chopsticks or tongs.(20-30 seconds should be enough)
5) slice the kamaboko. Cut into shapes for fun or leave them the way they are.
6) Used canned or raw ginnan. If you use raw ginnan, boil for a few minutes until bright yellow.
7) Cut up a few pieces of chicken. (Chicken breast or thighs are ok)
8) Mix the dashijiru with the egg and pass it through a strainer or use gauze. Gauze is faster and you don’t have to push the egg through the wire mesh but if you don’t have gauze or cheese cloth, a wire mesh works well too.
9) Put enough water in a pot so that the water is not coming out of the holes.
10) Put all the ingredients (except the mitsuba) into the ceramic bowls and fill it with the egg mixture about 3/4 of the way.
11) Cover the steamer and steam on high heat for 2 minutes and turn to the lowest heat setting and steam for an additional 15 minutes.
12) Garnish with mitsuba and serve on a coaster.
Make dashijiru and chill it.
Use any type of kamaboko
Cut into shapes for fun.
Boil raw ginnan for 1-2 minutes. They should turn a bright yellow color.
Blanch the mitsuba stems for 20-30 seconds in a pot of boiling water holding on to the top with chopsticks.
Create a loop with the ends and tie them near the top.
All of the chawan mushi ingredients.
Cut the egg with the chopstick and mix but don’t beat.
Mix egg with dashijiru.
Set up the steamer and put ingredients into the bowls except the mistuba.
Put the lid on and steam on high for 2 minutes and reduce to low for 15 minutes.
Chawan mushi should be served on a coaster with a small spoon.
Serve with Braised Chicken and Daikon, Kyuri (Cucumber) and Wakame Sunomono (Pickles) and Rice.
Naomi Kuwabara was born and raised in California but spent many summers in Japan growing up. She has spent time living in Hokkaido and Osaka, both meccas for Japanese cuisine. Her passion is cooking and sharing her experiences cooking Japanese food with others. Her blog Umamitopia is about her experiences cooking Japanese food. Her greatest inspirations are from her mother and grandmother. Her cooking adventures can be found at http://umamitopia.com.
