Yakiniku Rice Burger including how to make burger wrappers

Have you ever had MOS Burger’s yakiniku rice burger? I went back to Japan in January and I was watching TV and someone was trying to recreate MOS Burger’s yakiniku rice burger. I was inspired and wanted to make it here in Australia too. The challenge was whether I can get the right ingredients or not outside of Japan. I wanted to make them with available ingredients in Australia.

Basically, only 3 ingredients are required for making the Yakiniku Rice Burger: beef, rice, and lettuce. Beef was no problem to find. Aussie beef is very popular in Japan. There is plenty of beef in Australia, the only problem is that the beef is not cut the same here as Japan.  Beef in Japan is usually very thinly sliced, however here, it is very thick cut. So what I did is bought steak meat and cut it very very thin myself at home. I don’t have a special Japanese knife but still managed to slice the beef very thin so anyone can do this. If you struggle, freeze the meat a little bit then it will be easier to slice the meat very thin.

The rice needs to be especially sticky for the burger bun. I used Sunrice’s Japanese sushi rice and mixed it with some sticky mochi rice. On the package it says “sweet” but it is not sweet at all. I used one cup of sushi rice and I added 1/2 cup of mochi rice and cooked accordingly with my rice cooker. If you can not get mochi rice you can add ‘Katakuriko’ (potato starch) to hold the rice grain together after the rice has been cooked.

I bought fresh lettuce leaves from a local farmers market this morning. The TV program I watched was using a store bought Yakiniku sauce. I do have two Japanese grocery stores that I can get Japanese ingredients in Brisbane but for those who don’t have any Japanese grocery stores nearby, you can make the yakiniku sauce yourself by mixing soy sauce, sugar, miso, Tobanjan(Chinese chilli sauce), garlic, and sesame together. Then let the beef marinate in the sauce for about 20 minutes. I wanted to make sure the yakiniku beef has a strong flavour because the rice is so plain. Adding miso gives this yakiniku a strong flavour and it is delicious when it is eaten with rice buns. Hope you try and enjoy Japanese favourite rice burger!!

Bonus! These rice buns are sticky enough that the grains stay together but wrapping the yakiniku burgers together with wrappers will add extra support and make it easier to hold and eat just like the Mos Burgers. So this is how I made the wrappers. I bought 25 sheets of wax papers for A$2.80. The paper is 218mm x 250mm in size. I fold them in half and then cut as the following photo shows. Fold the side excess paper on the wrapper and apply sticky tape, done!