Why they’re so good
These teriyaki beef bowls (or beef teriyaki donburi) are gorgeous thin slices of beef cooked in a teriyaki sauce until dark, glossy, sticky and tender. Served over rice with veggies and pickled ginger, it’s the perfect dinner rice bowl.
Donburi is a Japanese world meaning rice bowl and you can create a really delicious dinner on top of a bowl of rice just like this teriyaki beef, really easily at home. The beef is cooked until caramelised with crispy edges in a homemade teriyaki sauce, then it’s served over easy Japanese rice. Add your favourite salad sides and a few Japanese classics and you have a quick, healthy and tasty dish in 30 minutes or less.
If you love teriyaki, you need to try this gourmet but simple teriyaki salmon too.
Table of contents
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Ingredients
Jump to the recipe for full ingredients and instructions.
- Rice: You’ll need sushi rice for this recipe, sometimes known as koshihikari rice (rather, koshihikari is one type of sushi rice and the one that seems to be the most available worldwide). You could use jasmine rice but increase the water to 3 cups.
- Beef steak: I make this just like my favourite teriyaki takeout did – very finely sliced steak. I use rump steak but you can use sirloin or porterhouse too. Make sure to remove any fat. You can also use beef mince (ground beef) and any grade will work here but stick to lean if you’re after a healthier meal. Flank steak is great here too as it has loads of flavour and because it’s being sliced very thinly and cooked quickly, it shouldn’t be tough.
- Homemade teriyaki sauce: My teriyaki sauce is a very easy combination of 4 shelf-stable ingredients – soy sauce, mirin, cooking sake and brown sugar. All are available from most supermarkets / grocery stores these days. You can use 2 tablespoons of honey in place of the sugar but keep in mind you will get that honey flavour.
- Cornflour/cornstarch: What we call cornflour where I am, is often known as cornstarch in other regions around the world. It’s the very fine powder that’s normally used for thickening sauce.
- Vegetables/salad: For the salad on the sides, I use carrot, baby cucumbers and shelled edamame beans (I use the frozen ones).
- Rice wine vinegar: Rice vinegar is a lovely Asian vinegar with a slight sweetness to it. It’s wonderful stirred through rice and great for making quick pickled vegetables like I do with the carrots here.
How to make it
Teriyaki steak bowls are so simple to make. You’ll make a homemade teriyaki sauce that takes about 5 minutes. The Japanese rice practically cooks itself but I love to season it, Japanese-style. And the beef itself takes less than 10 minutes to cook. All that to say, you can have this ready in under 30 minutes. Perfect for a delicious midweek dinner.
Jump to the recipe for full ingredients and instructions.
1. How to cook Japanese rice
We’ll start with the rice. Once that gets on to cook, you can proceed with everything else. First, rinse the rice really well under running water until the water runs clear. Add it to a medium saucepan and cover it with water (the ratio is 2 cups of rice to 2 ¼ cups of water for sushi rice, and this amount will serve 4 people).
Bring the rice to a boil, then turn it down to low-medium and let it simmer for 15 minutes, covered. Once the 15 minutes is up, let it sit with the lid still on for 10 minutes. It may be tempting to lift the lid and check, but please don’t or you’ll let the steam out that is needed to finish the rice off perfectly.
2. How to make teriyaki sauce
This basic teriyaki sauce recipe can be used on just about anything from chicken to seafood as well. It’s incredibly easy to make and once made it will sit in a jar in your fridge for 2 weeks quite happily.
Simply combine soy sauce, mirin, cooking sake and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring it to a boil and let it boil for a few minutes until it thickens slightly.
3. Slice the steak
If you put your steak in the freezer 15-20 minutes before slicing, it’s easier to slice thinly. To get the crispy edges and quick cook, you want to slice it 2-3mm thick, maximum (that’s ⅒ inch).
4. Season the steak
Mix the steak with a little cornflour (cornstarch) and some of the teriyaki sauce and give it a good mix.
5. Cook the teriyaki beef
To cook the beef teriyaki, just add it to some hot oil in a pan over medium high heat. Let it cook until just cooked through. You might notice a fair amount of moisture come out and this can make things gluggy instead of caramelised, so if you do, set the steak aside and cook that liquid until it almost completely evaporates.
6. Caramelise the steak
The steak is already cooked and can be served up right now but I love to take it one step further and get some crispy edges and caramelisation so add a little of the teriyaki sauce mixture to the steak in the pan and cook for another minute or so until it’s getting sticky and caramelised. It’ll get really dark at this point.
7. Fluff up the rice and serve
Now, everything’s ready, so take the lid off your rice and give it a fluff up. You can give it an optional season, the way I do by adding a little mirin and rice wine vinegar to the rice and stirring it through – very similar to sushi rice. Now, you just need to pile everything up and serve up your teriyaki rice bowls.
Tips and tricks
- Rinse the rice to remove the excess starch or it will be too gluggy when it’s done.
- Don’t lift the lid on the rice until all the time is up. Keeping the lid on is critical to getting it perfectly cooked. It’s tempting to check it, I know but if you’ve followed the steps, it’ll be done correctly. If your pan has a glass lid, you can always tip the saucepan on an angle to see if you can see any water still to be absorbed.
- Don’t overcook the steak. Once you can tell it’s just cooked through, if there is liquid in the pan, remove the steak just for a minute or so, allowing that moisture to continue cooking and evaporate before adding the teriyaki beef back with the extra teriyaki sauce.
- Try a different protein: While these teriyaki beef bowls are incredibly tasty, you can swap out the beef for chicken or salmon and they’d be equally as good.
- Don’t forget to serve up the leftover sauce on the side.
⏰ Time-saving tips
Want to make these super quick beef teriyaki bowls even quicker? Try these ideas.
- Use minced beef / ground beef to save you slicing up the beef.
- Make the teriyaki sauce ahead. It keeps in the fridge for 2 weeks.
- The rice can be made a day or two ahead, as well.
- I use a julienne peeler to julienne the carrots quickly and easily.
Variations
- Other meats: The teriyaki sauce recipe will work well with chicken or salmon as well and it’s nice used as a dipping sauce too. You can use lean ground beef in place of the steak strips or even use ground chicken or ground turkey.
- Veggies: You could try some different vegetables in your teriyaki donburi (rice bowls), either cooked or raw, like green onions, snow peas, broccoli and red bell pepper. You could stir-fry some mushrooms to go on the side which is delicious.
- Spice: If you want a spicy kick to your teriyaki rice bowls, try adding some dried chilli flakes (red pepper flakes).
- Umami: You can add some extra umami by adding some garlic or sesame oil.
- Cut the carbs: If you want to cut out some carbs, substitute cauliflower rice for sushi rice.
- Stir fry: Swap your teriyaki beef bowls into a beef teriyaki stir fry recipe by stir frying some veggies in with the beef. It would be best to cook the beef, then set aside. Add the veggies to pan and cook to your liking, then add back the beef with some teriyaki sauce to finish it off.
Storage
Leftovers should be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for 2-3 days.
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Ingredients
- 2 cups Koshihikari rice (sushi rice) (400g/~14oz)
- 500 g lean rump steak, porterhouse or sirloin steak (weight after fat removed) (1.1 lb)
- ½ cup soy sauce (125ml)
- ½ cup mirin (125ml)
- ⅓ cup cooking sake (80ml)
- ¼ cup packed brown sugar (50g/1.8oz)
- 1 teaspoon cornflour (US cornstarch)
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2-3 medium carrots julienned
- 3 baby cucumbers (qukes) or persian cucumber sliced into coins
- 1 cup frozen shelled edamame beans thawed
- furikake or sesame seeds
- pickled ginger
OPTIONAL SEASONING INGREDIENTS
- ¼ cup mirin
- 1 ½ tablespoons rice wine vinegar (notes 1)
- pinch of salt
For best results, always weigh ingredients where a weight is provided
Equipment
- Small & medium saucepans
- Skillet / frying pan
Instructions
- Freeze the steak for about 20 minutes so that it’s firmer and easier to slice into very thin slices.
- Rinse the rice through a sieve under running cold water, rubbing the grains with your hands, until the water runs clear.
- Cook your rice: You can use a rice cooker according to the manufacturer instructions or the absorption method.Absorption method: Add the rice to a medium saucepan. Add 2 ¼ cups of tap water. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Cover, reduce the heat to low-medium and simmer for 15 minutes. Turn the heat off and let the rice sit with the lid on for 10 minutes.
- Remove the lid and fluff the rice up then it’s ready to serve – keep it covered until required. If using the optional seasoning, add 2 tablespoons of mirin and 1 tablespoon of rice wine vinegar and mix through well.
- Meanwhile, make the teriyaki sauce: Add the soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar to a small saucepan and bring to a boil for 3-4 minutes or until slightly thickened. Pour into a jug so that it can cool.
- If you’d like to dress the carrots add them to a bowl with the remaining seasoning ingredients (1 tablespoon mirin and ½ tablespoon of rice wine vinegar) along with a pinch of salt and toss well to coat. Set aside until serving time.
- Slice the steak into thin slices (no more than 2-3mm thick), across the grain (notes).
- Mix the steak in a bowl with the cornflour (cornstarch) and 2 tablespoons of the teriyaki sauce so that it’s evenly coated.
- Cook the teriyaki beef: Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the beef and spread it out into a single layer if possible. Let it cook for 4-5 minutes, turning as required until just cooked through.
- If there is a lot of liquid in the pan at this point, set the steak aside and reduce that liquid until almost entirely evaporated.
- Add the steak back to the pan with another 2 tablespoons of the teriyaki sauce, mix well and cook until starting to get dark and caramelised (another minute or so).
- Assemble your bowls: Add some rice to the bottom of each bowl, then add the teriyaki beef to one side. Fill in the rest of the space with your sides. Add a little pickled ginger to each and scatter some furikake over everything. Serve the leftover teriyaki sauce on the side.
- Please take a moment to leave a comment & rating. It's appreciated and so helpful.
Notes
- Tablespoons: I use a standard Australian 20ml tablespoon (equal to 4 teaspoons). Check yours before measuring.
- Cutting across the grain means you cut the meat in the opposite direction that the grain of the meat runs which makes the meat less tough or chewy. If you find it confusing, look closely to find the direction of the grain. Line your knife up with the grain. Now turn the knife or the meat 90° and slice in that direction.
- Nutrition details are approximate only – scroll below the recipe to find the full nutritional information.
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