Tapping the Pantry

Thursday's meal was a tuna, egg, and spinach soboro. Soboro is kind of like a casserole. You take some basic flavors, mince them, and serve on top of rice. It's very yummy, satisfying, and you can make it quickly with pretty much anything you have on hand.

I think I'll update every other day instead of each day. School really took its toll this week, and I'm not even into midterms and finals. The classes are fun, I just get busy quickly.

Today's topic is the pantry. We keep a lot of potential meals in there but forget about them. How often do you dread taking something new home because you're out of space? Well, something's taking up the space in there, right? Soboro is a perfect way to thin out the extra tuna, chicken or corn cans in there, and you'll end up with a tasty mix.

I had some tuna in there this week, so I pulled out the can, popped it open and threw it in the skillet. All it took was a tablespoon of soy sauce, some green onions that I keep chopped in the freezer, and a little ground ginger. The middle flavor is a single egg soboro. The recipe is almost identical to the Tamagoyaki feature but minus the vinegar and reduced to a third of the portions. Scramble the egg mixture and mince with a fork while it cooks to get the little granules you see above. The sweet egg and slightly salty fish mix wonderfully in the rice. Finally, the spinach was a bit of the frozen kind that I keep as a side. I cooked it in the microwave with two tablespoons of water and added a little dash of soy sauce and a half clove of minced garlic, spooning the rest of the soy water over the rice bed to keep it moist.

It really is that easy, and clean up was a breeze. You can exchange the tuna for canned chicken, chicken breast (as long as you mince it finely), ground beef, ground turkey, or anything really. I've seen recipes that used canned or fresh green beans, corn, and julienne carrots. Just make sure that the pieces are minced fine so you can work them through the rice and mix the flavors. Soboro can also use noodles instead of rice, if you want a change of pace and to get rid of the extra noodles.