Home / All Recipes / Japanese / Dry Hayashi Beef Rice Bowl

Dry Hayashi Beef Rice Bowl

Name: Dry Hayashi Beef Rice Bowl
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 1 h
Ingredients: 2 tablespoon oil; 150 gram carrot, diced; 1 onion, cut into 2 halves, dice one half, and thinly slice the other half; 300 gram ground beef; 2 teaspoon cornstarch; 1 cup beef stock/water; 1/4 cup tomato ketchup; 2 tablespoon tonkatsu sauce (or Worcestershire sauce); 2 tablespoon sake; steamed white rice (4 servings); 4 poached eggs/onsen tamago (soft-boiled eggs)/hard-boiled eggs

Last updated: Nov 23, 2020 — Published: Sep 14, 2017 — By: Anita — 8 comments

Give this Japanese rice bowl a try. The fruity tomato-based sauce with ground beef is perfect over steamed rice. Don't forget the poached egg and crispy fried onions.

Japanese dry hayashi beef rice bowl, with poached egg, and fried onions.

Rice bowl is one of the main staples of quick and cheap Japanese lunches, basically the stuff that fuels most Japanese salaryman ;)

One of my favorite rice bowls is the hayashi beef rice bowl. At a glance, hayashi beef rice looks like curry rice, but hayashi rice is sweet and fruity while curry rice tends to be spicier.

Ingredients for Japanese dry hayashi beef rice bowl: ground beef, carrot, onion, garlic, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, sake, and cornstarch.

Hayashi beef: dry vs. wet (original)

A typical hayashi beef dish is wetter instead of dry. It also uses red wine instead of sake. For the dry version, you can get away with sake, and that’s what I use for this recipe.

Ingredients for dry hayashi beef

We will need ground beef, carrot, onion, garlic, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce (or tonkatsu sauce), sake, beef stock, and cornstarch.

How to cook dry hayashi beef

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet/frying pan. Sauté diced carrot and diced onion (reserve the sliced onion for later) until the onion is translucent.

Add ground beef, garlic, corn starch, and 1/2 cup of beef stock to the skillet/pan. Stir to break the ground beef. Cook it for 3 minutes.

Pour the rest of the beef stock, along with tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce (or tonkatsu sauce), and sake. Cook until the liquid is almost dry. About 15 minutes.

(1) Sauté onion and carrot until onion is translucent. (2) Add ground beef, garlic, cornstarch, and part of the beef stock. Stir to break up the ground beef and cook until no longer pink. (3) Add the remaining beef stock, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and sake. Cook until the liquid is almost dry.

Rice, Poached Egg, and Crispy Onions

Since this is a rice bowl, the ground beef in itself is just one part of the equation. To make a rice bowl, you will also need:

steamed white rice
poached eggs
crispy onions

For the eggs, you can prepare poached eggs, onsen tamago (soft-boiled eggs), or mash hard-boiled eggs and season with salt and pepper.

To make crispy onions, heat 1/2" of oil in a small frying pan/pot. Once the oil is hot, fry the thinly sliced onions until golden brown and crispy. Remove fried onion with a slotted spoon and place on a kitchen paper towel to remove excess oil.

If you are not in the mood to fry onions, you can cut nori into thin strips, but crispy onions are superior in my opinion.

To serve, pour dry hayashi beef over a bowl of steamed rice, then top with poached egg, and sprinkle with fried onions.

Other Japanese rice bowl recipes

If you love this hayashi beef rice bowl, you may want to try my recipes for other Japanese rice bowls too. They are all equally delicious, quick, and easy to prepare: