Niku Jaga is a Japanese style meat and potato stew that’s quick, easy, and reheats well. It’s a soy sauce-based stew, so this dish is packed with that umami flavor Japanese food is so well known for. You can also make this dish with pork, chicken, venison, bison, or turkey. It’s very flexible and versatile.

I have not yet adapted this for crock pot, but if any of you readers are feeling adventurous, please do! I image this would be great with big chunks of slow cooked meat.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb thinly sliced beef

1 1/2 cups small potatoes, quartered

1 large onion

1/2 kake ginger, this is approximately a ping-pong ball sized piece of ginger

1 cup dashi stock

1 1/2 tbsp sugar – You can easily cut this down to 1 tbsp, but any less and it won’t taste right.

1 1/2 tbsp cooking sake

1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce

Start by mixing the sugar, cooking sake, and soy sauce in a bowl until the sugar dissolves. Set aside.

Heat 1/2 tbsp of olive oil in a pot. I usually use my Korean copper pot for this dish. Add the ginger and meat. Stir fry until the meat changes to a nice brown color. Remove the meat from the pot and set aside.

Next, add 1 tbsp olive oil back to the same pot. Add the potato and onion, stir fry for a few seconds, then add the dashi. Bring to a boil, then add the soy sauce mixture and cook for 5 minutes.

Finally, add the meat and cook for an additional 15 minutes. It’s done when you can easily insert a fork into a potato.

Serve hot over rice. I sprinkled mine with Korean red pepper for a bit of a kick. Nommms!