I wanted something simple and different to do with ground Axis and rice tonight. I was Googling for ground beef and rice recipes when I found Ohm Rice at Recipezaar.com. I changed it up to suit our love for peppers and spices! The recipe in the link is a bit bland as is, but I gave it a five star rating. It's just so good and so simple. And easily changed to suit your own tastes. I now have this wonderfully simple Korean recipe to add to my repertoire. I'll be cooking this a lot--especially for guests as it's so inexpensive and different! The leftovers are obviously going to heat up extremely well, I can't wait to heat some up in the morning and fry an egg to put on it. Mmmm.
This recipe is so cheap, fast, and tasty I can't even begin to express my complete joy in finding it! In fact, I'm so eager to blog it that my freshly prepared bowl of Ohm Rice is sitting on the counter with only three bites eaten out of it. Hubby ate one of those bites and gave it two thumbs up before he dashed off to the studio. Although he had several bites before the egg was added--he was helping me season it. By the way, Ohm Rice does not taste like your average ground beef recipe! It's so good you'd think it couldn't possibly have something so mundane as ground meat in it. I actually detest cooked carrots but don't even notice them in this dish.
It's a good dish for chopsticks, which is how we eat all our Asian dishes. The fork you see in the images way below was used only for taste testing and to cut the egg open for the camera--fat lot of good it did me visually. The ingredients seem (mostly) so American that I nearly forgot it was an Asian dish and grabbed the chopsticks only at the very end.
No, runny egg yolk is not gross. It's bursting with delicious texture, and flavor and enhances a dish like this amazingly well. Think of thick, yellow, warm egg yolk as a rich and exotic sauce.
I do wish I'd had green onions instead of plain onions for this dish, I think it would have been tasty and more attractive. I'd have kept the chopped green tops separate and added them toward the end so they would have retained their color and crunch. Heck, even just having a few chopped green onion tops to add at the end of this exact recipe would have been fine.
Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef, pork, turkey, or venison. I used ground Axis
1 large potato, grated
2 large carrots, grated
1/2 a large onion, chopped
3 Kung Pao peppers, chopped (if available) -- if not, substitute 1 tsp. crushed red pepper or more to taste
1 tsp. honey
2 minced garlic cloves or 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
Instead of the above two ingredients, I used about 1/4 tsp. of My Beloved Garlic Honey and minced one of the Garlic Honey Pickles in addition to a few unmeasured dashes of garlic powder. The recipe really did need just a touch of sweetness and a little garlic!
4 TBS soy sauce (more if needed for taste and for liquid)
2 TBS Olive oil or fire oil because it will be threatening to stick to your pan if you don't add oil.
salt
1 cup uncooked Jasmine rice if you have it, if not, just use your favorite rice.
1 egg per serving
Cook rice according to package directions or in your rice cooker--when done set aside until ready to use.
Cook ground meat until just over halfway done, drain off excess fat and liquid, then add grated vegetables, garlic, honey, peppers, soy sauce, the oil, and 1/2 tsp. salt. Cook this mixture until onions are soft and potatoes seem done. The vegetables should not be mush. Please don't overcook!
Mix rice in to dish and stir well. Taste and see if you need a bit more salt and/or soy sauce.
Put mixture into as many bowls or onto as many plates as people you will be serving and fry eggs in butter for each individual serving, putting a fried egg on top of each serving. I prefer mine rather runny but others may not. Another option is to make individual, one-egg omelets for each serving. The omelets should be flat, open, and unstuffed with anything. Garnishing with a bit of chopped green onion would be very attractive. Once served, the eater would chop their egg up a bit and stir it into the dish to eat. I've also seen this dish (online) served wrapped inside an omelet and covered in ketchup. All I can say about that is, ew! But to each her own, yo.
This dish reminds me a lot of really good fried rice, although the potato adds a new and filling dimension!
Below is the photo journal of this dish. I was too hungry to cook another egg and try to make it prettier for the photos. It was plenty tasty all the same! And this isn't the pretties dish anyway, but it's definitely homecooking, Korean style. At the very bottom is a little tutorial on how to chop an onion for those of you who don't watch the Food Network.
Images will enlarge when clicked.
How To Chop An Onion:
The trick to chopping an onion is to cut it in half lengthwise and leave the big, gnarly end intact on each half, cutting off the smoother ends only if needed and peeling the onion. Long slices aimed more or less towards the core of the onion, going from tip to tip of your onion half (without cutting into the gnarly end), are the next step. Then slice across your longitudinal cuts, thinner for more finely chopped onions and wider for more coarsely chopped. This is as simple and fast as it gets without a fancy onion chopper. Leaving the big, ugly end in place holds everything together while you chop and allows you to waste none of your onion. By the way, I chop, slice, and dice as much as possible on heavy-duty paper plates. It's probably not very "green" but I don't have the energy for endlessly washing cutting boards. I also don't have enough cutting boards! I figure I am saving water by using paper plates so maybe it all works out in the end.
If it matters, we very rarely eat on paper plates. I like a real plate when I chow down!
Click here for the slightly easier to print version of Ohm Rice.
