The Spam does most of the seasoning. There is only a splash of soy sauce, and cubes of Spam browned at the edges give salty, crisp bites all through the rice.
Spam with a thin soy-and-sugar glaze and big, soft curds of egg go over rice, finished with mayonnaise and shredded roasted seaweed. The cubes brown best spread out and left untouched, and those crisp edges are what set them apart from the soft egg.
One browned slice of luncheon meat, one pressed block of rice and a single strip of nori: every cut shows just those two layers. The meat and the bottled sauce carry all the salt, and the rice is left plain. These are made to be eaten right away, not packed to sit for hours at room temperature.
Tuna, rice, chopped pickled radish and cucumber are bound with gochujang mayonnaise and packed tight into seasoned tofu pouches, the kind used for inari sushi. More gochujang makes it hotter; more mayonnaise makes the filling softer.
Lettuce and perilla leaves each take a small spoonful of rice, a dab of ssamjang (a thick soybean and chili paste), thin slices of raw garlic and some chili, then get folded into a single bite. Wet leaves let the rice and paste slide right out; after washing, they stand in a sieve to drain and are patted dry.
Butter-seared steak, sliced thin and fanned over rice, gets a soy, mirin and garlic glaze made in the same pan. With no stock of its own, the sauce leans on the browned juices left after searing, and a deep crust on the meat pays off twice.
Peppers turn sweet and soft in the oven, which is why the beef, rice and tomato filling is seasoned a little saltier than would taste right on its own. Mozzarella goes on for the last 10 minutes and melts into a cover over the filling.
As the rolls cook slowly over low heat, the cabbage gives up its sweetness and softens the sharpness of the tomato sauce. Pack them tightly into the pot so they hold together while they simmer.
Sliced, each round shows white and pale pink glutinous rice packed into the channels of the lotus root, a red-and-white pattern meant for celebrations in Kadoma, Osaka. Lotus root counts as auspicious because its open holes suggest a clear view of the future, and the clay soil of Kawachi and Kadoma has grown it since the Edo period. After about 2 hours of steaming, the root turns sweet with a light crispness while the rice becomes chewy. Served in 8mm slices with kinako and sweet azuki paste, it eats like a dessert.
Think of soft tofu stew (sundubu jjigae) made with just a cup of broth and poured straight over rice. Pork belly is cooked first so gochugaru and garlic can bloom in its fat, which gives the small amount of broth its heat. An egg cracked into the center and cooked only until the white just sets adds a soft, rich finish.
Roasting the soaked rice in oil and cooling it before cooking it in sweet azuki broth keeps the grains loose and fragrant, unlike sticky sekihan, which it otherwise resembles. On the Boso Peninsula in Chiba it was offered at the Obon welcoming and farewell fires, at harvest prayers, and at celebrations after rice planting.
Shiitake, carrot and burdock, cut into thin matching strips, are spread over the rice and cooked in dashi seasoned with soy sauce and mirin. They stay on top until the rice is done. Heavy vegetables mixed down into the grains keep the liquid from circulating and leave underdone patches.
This is the Japanese home standby of raw egg and soy sauce over rice, with butter added. The butter melts in the middle of freshly cooked rice, and the raw egg cracked on top warms just enough in that heat to coat each grain in a silky layer. Since the egg is eaten raw, it should be very fresh.
The rice is ground only coarsely and cooked in water first, and the porridge keeps a little more texture than a smooth gruel. Milk goes in two or three additions, and only after the rice starch has thickened the pot, or it may split. Topped with pine nuts and a pinch of cinnamon, this milk porridge appears in Joseon-era court records.
Strong bancha brewed to an amber color becomes the cooking liquid, and unwashed rice boils in it just long enough to lose its hard center, leaving loose grains in a thin, flowing porridge. Where Nara's cha-gayu reheats cooked rice in hojicha, this Yamaguchi version starts from raw rice in bancha and is left largely unstirred so it never turns sticky.
Warm soy tare goes over the tempura the moment it lands on the rice, and the grains take the sauce while the tops of the shrimp, sweet potato and eggplant stay freshly crisp. Shallow cuts along each shrimp's belly let it lie straight across the bowl.
The eggs are cooked first until barely set and lifted out, then large tomato wedges go into the same pan with soy sauce and a little sugar. Some of the tomato breaks down into a thin sauce and the rest stays in pieces. The eggs return for a quick fold, and whatever red juice is left in the pan goes over the rice too.
This takes the Chinese home classic of tomato and scrambled egg (xihongshi chao dan) and adds rice to the same pan. Sweet-sour tomato juice stains the rice red, with big, soft pieces of egg running through it.
Taro goes in just as the rice grains start to swell, so part of it melts into the porridge and thickens it while the rest stays in soft, fluffy cubes. The rice is toasted in perilla oil at the start, which puts a nutty note under the taro's earthiness. Soup soy sauce and salt season it lightly, and chopped green onion goes on top.
Grated jinenjo, a sticky wild Japanese yam, is worked in a mortar and loosened little by little with cooled miso dashi until it pours in a thick ribbon over hot rice. Mariko, in present-day Shizuoka City, was the twentieth of the fifty-three Tokaido post towns, and travelers stopped there for its tororo-jiru. Jinenjo is dug from mid-autumn into winter, and some communities eat the dish on January second.
Grated mountain yam, loosened with deliberately strong, fully cooled miso soup until it still clings to a spoon, is poured over freshly cooked hot rice. In northern and southern Akita and Yurihonjo, this was eaten during the first three days of the New Year and on the day after a celebration.
The soaked hijiki is rinsed twice in cold water to cut its saltiness and any off smell, then sauteed in sesame oil with shiitake and carrot before the rice goes in. As the pot cooks, the deep sea flavor of the hijiki gets into the rice, and shrimp seasoned with soup soy sauce and garlic sit on top. For a crust on the bottom, turn the heat up a little for the last minute.
The truffle oil goes on only after the rice has finished resting. Heat drives off its aroma, so it never cooks in the pot. The rice itself is cooked in vegetable stock with shiitake, king oyster mushroom and onion that were first sauteed in butter, and the king oyster is cut thick enough to give a real bite.
Grilled tteokgalbi, Korean short rib patties, are cut into bites and returned to the pan with onion in a soy and syrup sauce just long enough to turn glossy. The heat goes off while a little sauce still pools in the pan, and that goes over the rice too. A soft fried egg sits on top, its yolk broken and mixed through.