Kamameshi, or kettle rice, is rice prepared in a cast iron kettle and cooked over an open flame. In restaurants it is often prepared tableside using a chafing dish. I make this rice with chicken, plenty of veggies, dashi, soy, mirin, and of course white rice. Once in a while we like to break out our kamameshi set and prepare this delicious and authentic Japanese meal. The sets are readily available – I have links to a couple at the bottom of this page.
Kamameshi can be prepared as plain white rice or with all sorts of ingredients. I mixed in some nice mountain vegetables… carrot, gobō (burdock root), enoki mushrooms, takenoko (bamboo shoots), and kogomi (fiddlehead ferns). You can also use seafood or other types of meat. Other ways to prepare it include meatless using green peas, gobo, or mushrooms.
When preparing this dish, be sure to enjoy the okoge, which is the rice at the bottom of the kettle that burns during preparation. It comes our crispy and usually full of flavor as the liquid soaks into the kamameshi at the bottom of the kettle.
You can buy a kamameshi set and cook this yummy rice right at your own table. If you don’t have a chafing dish, it can be prepared over the stove in a ceramic bowl using a heat diffuser.
