Furochan Eats: Taco Rice GIF!

Taco rice is the culinary lovechild of Tex-Mex, Okinawan and Japanese flavours -- a dish that's popular all over Japan these days. It ticks all the boxes of food that I love to eat: sloppy, umamiful, low-effort, voluminous, summery, and utterly delicious. It is especially easy to make when you have leftover stewed or braised minced meat of some kind (in this case, leftover Bolognese sauce), so all you need is to put on your rice cooker, chop up some tomatoes and leafy vegetables and Bob's your uncle. I enjoyed putting this together for lunch so much that I made a little GIF of the process. Fun to look at, isn't it?

The beauty of taco rice is how versatile it is once you know the basic components: rice, cheese, leafy greens, tomatoes, salsa, stewed meat, more cheese, sauce. You could vary all of those: proper grated sharp Cheddar (cheese is expensive in Japan, so I had the ready-grated kind in a bag), different kinds of leafy and crunchy veg, your favourite flavour of meat (I'm thinking a fish sauce or miso-flavoured braise next time), all manner of hot sauces and Sriracha-flavoured mayonnaise. Maybe even brown rice. The possibilities are endless!