#chazuke

Chazuke!

i was rewatching bungo stray dogs and started craving chazuke and it reminded me of the time i cosplayed skk and sskk with my friends (i was atsushi) and we all got what our characters canonically favorite food was…

"Sorry I couldn't get you anything for today.. I lost my wallet at the river again"

I've been working hard redrawing my old art for today. It's so tiring but worth it. Aaand I'm almost late for his birthday.. waaa

^^this is my chazuke before I put the tea in. @smemie here's the recipe :)

From what I gather, chazuke's very much a leftovers kind of meal. Like fried rice, where you use whatever you have in your fridge, so you can just sub out ~the main protein~ as you will. Usually it's baked salmon, I think? But I'm allergic to fish. So.

Ingredients:

rice (day-old rice works better because it falls apart less in the tea)

green tea (I'm fancy and I use sencha, but green tea is green tea)

water for the tea

some form of protein (I like using firm/extra firm tofu cubes or meat scraps because they're really cheap)

soy sauce <3

gochujang (it's Korean chili paste...hnghh so good)

ginger powder

furikake ochazuke (so, this is a little container of wakame seweed bits and lil crunchy rice balls)

How to make it:

Cook your protein/warm it up. I pat my tofu dry (and squish it a little) then I cut it into cubes about 1 cm on each side. Stick them in a pan of hot oil (HOT OIL OKAY YOU DON'T WANT IT TO GLUE ITSELF TO THE PAN) and let it sizzle until it turns pretty shades of yellow-brown.

Then you grab a flat cooking utensil (like a flat spoon) and pray to the tofu gods that your tofu isn't sticking. It's sticking, though, so channel your inner shonen protagonist and pry the cubes off the bottom of your pan with violent forward-scraping motions. Your tofu will get a little squished. It's okay, because then you have nice cronchy bits later. Do this until it's gold-brown all over.

Take your tofu out of the oil and strain out the oil. No one likes oily soup.

Make your tofu seasoning. This is optional! But I like mixing a spoonful of gochujang with a couple spoonfuls of soysauce and dash of ginger powder, and soaking my tofu in the spicy sauce.

But hey! The hardest part is over! Put your rice in a bowl in a nice mound. You know how much rice you can eat at once, measure it out accordingly.

Put your tofu cubes/fried meat/whatever protein on top of the rice. It's a bed. Treat them gently. Or not, it's all going to the same place anyway.

Then sprinkle the furikake wakame over the top. Be generous with that shit, unless you hate seaweed, in which case you probably shouldn't.

MAKE YOUR TEA NOW. Green tea is delicate. Like glass, or Atsushi's self esteem. So heat some water up but make sure it's not boiling--if your tea kettle is fancy and does temperature, 160 Fahrenheit is a nice place to be.

Soak a spoonful of green tea leaves/a green tea teabag in the water for a couple minutes. Then take out the leaves and pour your tea over your bowl of chazuke. Fill it up maybe 2/3 of the way.

Got some leftover salmon? Time to make chazuke, one of the tastiest and simplest soups I know!

Make a mug of hot green tea.

Tuck the salmon into hot rice.

Pour the tea over the rice.

Add chazuke seasoning (bought at H-Mart) or just crumble some kim (toasted seaweed laver) on top.

It’s the best.

Wanna get this and a bunch more recipes? Check out my cookbook memoir COOKING WILL BREAK YOUR HEART on Kickstarter!