Momofuku Chicken and Egg

I love the combination of chicken and egg. I love that the Japanese have a chicken and egg dish called oyakodon (parent and child donburi). I love that Wylie Dufresne calls the combination "whimsical". I love the breakfast chicken and egg burger at Oporto.

I still have to make a proper oyakodon. I must do that soon.

This post, however, is about Momofuku's chicken and egg. There are many many articles on the internet about this recipe (that's just from the first page of a google search). Chang wanted to incorporate the smokiness of a yakitori chicken and rice dish into an homage to the oyakodon. Momofuku uses a cold smoker to get the smokiness into the chicken, but as a nod to us home cooks Chang also says you can try and emulate this flavour by cooking your chicken with bacon.

The chicken is supposed to be cooked in a confit of pork fat. At this stage of my Momofuku journey, I didn't even have a quarter cup of pork fat, much less the 5 cups required by the recipe. You can substitute a neutral oil but I didn't have that much oil hanging around either.

In the end, I used the very small amount of pork fat left from my pork belly. I covered the (brined) chicken in bacon and cooked it in the oven.


The chicken was very tasty. I have since made the chicken as it was supposed to be made (post coming soon) but this chicken was still moist and had a much more subtle smokiness.

The chicken is served atop rice (I used leftover sushi rice) with a slow poached egg, cucumber pickles and some ginger scallion sauce. I finished with a drizzle of soy sauce and sesame oil.

It is good. Very very good. So good I may have to make it again very soon.