Home-style ── Yoshoku (Japanese Western-style dishes)
Chikin Raisu
Chicken rice — ketchup-fried rice with chicken and onion
Rice fried with chicken, onion, and ketchup. Said to have started as omurice's filling before being served on its own, without the egg wrapper.
- Rice dishes
Lineage
What it's made of
Butter-fried rice grains rise in steam alongside ketchup's red. Chicken and onion, sometimes green peas, add color, and the sweet-and-sour seasoning is said to appeal to children and adults alike. Beyond serving as the filling for omurice, it's often plated on its own too, a fixture of the classic kids' lunch plate.
How it's made
The usual method is to either cook the rice first or fry raw rice together with chicken and onion in butter, then season it with ketchup. Some shops saute the filling first and mix it into cooked rice, others cook the rice and filling together from raw grains, it's said. Parsley is often scattered on top to finish, and some plate it with a small paper flag for children.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that the ketchup-fried rice that spread as omurice's filling is said to have started being served on its own, without being wrapped in egg. Its place in school lunches and bento boxes for children is also said to have helped it spread as a standalone dish in its own right, becoming a fixture of the classic kids' lunch plate along the way.
Before you go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
- At teishoku diners, shokudo, and machi-chukaA guide to the teishoku set-meal format, free rice refills, table placement, and paying at a shokudo-style diner.
Dishes in the same style
- DoriaButter rice topped with shrimp in cream, covered in white sauce and cheese and baked. Said to have been improvised at a Yokohama hotel for a guest who wasn't feeling well.
- Hayashi RaisuSliced beef and onion simmered in a demi-glace-style sauce, ladled over rice. Said to trace back to a dish Maruzen's founder Hayashi Yuteki served to visiting friends, though the naming itself has more than one story.