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Curry Doria is Japanese rice gratin topped with flavorful curry meat sauce and cheese and baked into perfection in a casserole. It screams comfort food!
In Japan, we have a rice gratin dish called Doria (ドリア). What’s Doria? Surely it doesn’t sound like a Japanese word but it is a popular Japanese rice casserole.
Doria was invented in the 1930s by the Swiss chef, Saly Weil, who was the first master chef at Hotel New Grand in Yokohama, Japan. The first Doria was Seafood Doria, which was improvised by Weil for a guest who was sick. Since then, all variations of Doria have become popular Yoshoku (Japanese western food) dishes in Japan (source).
Watch How To Make Curry Doria
Japanese rice gratin with delicious curry meat sauce on top of rice and topped with 2 kinds of cheese.
Doria Sauce
Doria has three components: steamed rice, the savory sauce, and the melted cheese on top. The savory sauce was originally Bechamel sauce (white sauce), but these days there are many sauce variations and this is where you can be creative.
I’ve shared the Doria recipe with the tomato-base sauce (Meat Doria recipe) before, so I’ve made today’s recipe with curry powder. However, it’s not spicy so children can also enjoy this dish.
When you make the sauce, make sure to season the sauce well, by making it a teeny bit on the salty side. The steamed rice dilutes the flavors of the sauce, so don’t worry about making it salty.
Interchangeable Dish with Pasta
By the way, if you prefer pasta instead of rice, you can use elbow (macaroni) or Fusilli pasta. Fusilli is a short spiral pasta with twisted surfaces that grabs hold of the sauce for more taste.
Growing up in Japan, Doria has always been one of my favorite comfort food. As a mom, I love a simple dish like this where you have grains, vegetables, proteins, and dairy in one dish. Plus, how could you resist the melted cheese on top? I especially love the crusty crispy cheese on the baking dish.
Japanese Ingredient Substitution: If you want to look for substitutes for Japanese condiments and ingredients, click here.
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Curry Doria is Japanese rice gratin topped with flavorful curry meat sauce and cheese and baked into perfection in a casserole. It screams comfort food!
- 3 rice cooker cups uncooked Japanese short-grain rice
- ½ onion
- 1 celery stalk
- 1 carrot
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 bay leaf
- 6 oz ground beef (170 g)
- 6 oz ground pork (170 g)
- kosher/sea salt (I use Diamond Crystal; Use half for table salt)
- freshly ground black pepper
- 1 Tbsp curry powder
- 1 ½ cups chicken/vegetable stock (360 ml)
- 2 Tbsp Tonkatsu sauce (Homemade Tonkatsu Sauce recipe)
- 2 Tbsp ketchup
- 2 Tbsp unsalted butter (separated)
- ½ cup Mozzarella cheese (120 ml; You can use other cheese like Parmesan.)
- ½ cup Romano cheese (120 ml; You can use other cheese like Parmesan.)
- 2 Tbsp panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
- Parsley (for garnish)
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Gather all the ingredients. Start cooking rice. See How To Cook Rice (rice cooker or stovetop) for reference. You will also need 2 medium-size baking dishes or 1 large baking dish.
- Mince the onion, celery, and carrot into small pieces.
- Heat olive oil over medium heat and add crushed (or minced) garlic and a bay leaf (if you tear in half, the fragrance will come out faster).
- Saute minced onion and celery over medium high heat until they are almost translucent.
- Add carrot and cook until tender.
- Add the meat and break it up, stirring occasionally. Cook until the meat is no longer pink.
- Season with salt and pepper.
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Add 1 Tbsp curry powder and 1 ½ cup chicken/vegetable broth. If the liquid doesn’t cover the ingredients, you will need to add more broth or water.
- Cover with the lid and bring to a boil. Once boiling, uncover and skim off the foam, fat, scum off from the liquid. It’s important to get rid of them so that you can achieve a nice and clean soup. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook for 5 minutes.
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Add 2 Tbsp Tonkatsu sauce, 2 Tbsp ketchup, and 1 Tbsp butter. The meat mixture should be a bit on saltier side than bland taste. You will be eating this dish with rice, so make sure it’s well seasoned. Cook and reduce the sauce until you see the bottom of the pan, about 10 minutes, and turn off the heat.
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Use the other 1 Tbsp butter to grease the sides and bottom of the baking dish(es). Place the steamed rice in the baking dish.
- Place the meat mixture (and sauce, if you like) on top of the rice. Then sprinkle both kinds of cheese. Finally sprinkle panko on top to add crispy texture.
- Pre-heat the oven on broil for 5 minutes. Broil for 2-3 minutes until the cheese has melted and you see nice char on top. If you don’t have a broil setting, you can simply bake it until the top is golden brown. Everything is already cooked, so all you need to do is melt the cheese.
- Sprinkle fresh parsley on top and serve immediately.
Recipe by Namiko Chen of Just One Cookbook. All images and content on this site are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without my permission. If you’d like to share this recipe on your site, please re-write the recipe in your own words and link to this post as the original source. Thank you.
Oh, that looks like comfort food, indeed! It’s a definite must try, especially with the curry flavor. Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you Donna! We love curry flavor with everything… 🙂 Hope you give it a try and let me know what you think. xo
Wow. This looks simple to prepare with easily found ingredients. I’m going to give it a go. Thanks for sharing, Nami.
Hi Tuty! I hope you enjoy this recipe! Thank you for checking my post! 🙂
Wow…can’t wait to try this one…major yummy! Good luck with new blog design…:)
Hi Lyn! I hope you like this recipe! And thank you for your well wishes! I can’t wait to see the new design live! 🙂
This recipe is amazing! I made it tonight and it was a completely great experience. And here are my 5 reasons for giving it 5 stars:
1. The cheese and panko baked on top of the sauce had a very juicy and slightly crispy flavor to the food. I had the experience with noodle gratins (like Cannelloni and chicken lasagne) but not as unique as here.
2. This was the first time I tried rice gratin, and I was amazed about the outcome using rice instead of noodles for once.
3. I liked the scent immediately present at the start from the bay leaf in the kitchen. As each ingredient followed, the scent developed excitement for the dish while cooking and before it was even ready.
4. The spicing was mild and well “harmonized”. The Tonkatsu sauce and ketchup seasoned the sauce with the curry, bay leaf and broth in a indescribable way that made it stand out.
5. Overall, it is very delicious, very simple and straight-forward to make. Any person will love making this.
有り難うございます!
Hello Leo! I’m sorry for my late response (sorry I was traveling…). I’m really happy to hear you enjoyed this recipe and thank you for your kind and detailed feedback! It’s an interesting recipe which includes some Japanese (rice), Indian (curry), cheese (western) parts… but it works wonderful!! Glad you tried and enjoyed it! Thank you!!!
どうもありがとう!
Wow this looks amazing! What curry powder brand do you recommend to use?
Hi Carrisa! Thank you! I use curry powder that I got from an Indian grocery store (it was a big bag of curry powder, and I’m almost done with it… haha). If you’re not sure which brand is good, Japanese S & B brand has curry powder that’s popular in Japanese cooking. But for the price (and taste), curry powder you can get at an Indian store is pretty good. 😉
Thank you for your detailed answer! I’ll keep my eyes open next time I’m at the Japanses market or Indian market! 😀
Hey Nami,
Made this now a few times and it turned out to be an all time favourite!
Colleagues, family and friends are all asking for the recipe haha.
I keep redirecting them to your website!
Thank you for all the inspiration.
XO
Hi Stephanie! I’m so happy to hear that! We love this dish too – was thinking of making it tomorrow. 🙂 Thank you for introducing this dish to your friends, family, and even colleagues! It means so much to me! Thank you!!! xoxo
I didn’t like this recipe much. The rue is great. But after cooking the meat for so long it just tastes over cooked. I followed the recipe pretty well. I recently made the Wafu Hambagu which turned out amazing!! So when I decided to try this, I was kind of disappointed by the end result.
Hi Yuli! Thank you for your feedback! Was yours too dry and no sauce to cover? Since it’s all cooked, oven time can be shorten (which is why we use “broil”). Do you think it would be better if you just pour the curry over rice and skip the cheese +grill part? Sorry you got disappointed with this dish.
Yummy looking, going to try to make it. Never had curry with cheese. Love your site, and recipes, so easy.
Hi Carol! Yeah, that’s true, I don’t see curry + cheese combination in Indian curry or Thai curry…. but somehow Japanese curry + cheese works. Never thought of that before. 😀 This one is so delicious. I hope you will give it a try!
Hi Nami,
thanks for your recipe! I did it today for lunch, It’s very ” Oishii”
Hi Stefania! Yay!!! I’m really happy to hear that you enjoyed this recipe! Thank you for trying it and for your kind feedback. xo Arigato!
I’ve made this dish 3x times in the past 3 months. Only modification I’ve made is that I’ve added boxed curry on top before it goes under the broiler (as per other recipes I’ve looked at online). My husband LOVES this and has claimed he would be happy to have this for lunch for the rest of his life. It also performs well in the freezer. Thanks for the recipe!
Hi Samantha! Thank you so much for your kind feedback! I’m so happy to hear that you two enjoy the recipe (and I love the easy modification!). Thank you for writing! xoxo
Hi Nami, I’ve been making your doria for years and I love it! But I was reading the original recipe yesterday (lost my recipe notebook) and realised I’ve been using double the meat all along. Is it really only 1/2 a pound? Because 3 rice cooker cups for me is 480g uncooked. I just want to double check if I’ve been making the doria wrong all this time! Thank you 🙂
Hi Nora! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I know where this meat comes from a Japanese grocery store, I think it’s the package that contains 6 oz beef and 6 oz pork. So the total amount is roughly 3/4 lbs. So a total of 1 lb meat is okay, too. I’ve updated this recipe. 🙂
I tried this for the first time tonight and it was absolutely delicious. As I was working my way through the recipe making this, my brain was struggling at how the ingredients would work together (curry and cheese as well as ketchup and tonkatsu sauce) as you’d think none of them would work well, and yet they all worked well together.
I only had parmesan cheese in the fridge so I used a cup of that on the top and it still turned out amazing. Next time I will have to try the mozzarella/parmesan mixture. I also only had ground pork in the freezer, so that’s what I used. I love how the recipe is forgiving on protein/cheese selections.
Hi Dawn! Thank you so much for trying this recipe. I’m so glad you enjoyed it! That weird combination (curry, ketchup, tonkatsu sauce) is pretty familiar for Japanese curry so I won’t take any credit for that. 🙂 And sprinkling the cheese on top is a necessity for the Doria or gratin dishes. It’s one of my favorite Doria recipes and I’m glad you enjoyed this dish. Thank you Dawn!
I’m new to cooking and have followed many of your (easier) recipes and love them. I really appreciate you posting this one with a video. I am Chinese but actually prefer Japanese cuisine. I watched Terrace House recently and have been scouring the internet for the recipe that was made in the early 2019/2020 episode and this is it!!! Thank you!!! I can’t wait to try this.
Hi Judy! I’m so glad to hear you enjoy my recipes. Thank you for your kind feedback. Ohhh! TH! I think I watched that episode. 😀 So glad you enjoy these recipes. Thank you so much for your kind feedback, Judy!
Made this tonight and it was amazing! Added a little garam masala too, as you do that in your curry roux recipe and we thought it wouldn’t hurt, and a bechamel for extra comfort food points and it was really tasty. Another hit Nami!
Hi Leah,
Thank you so much for trying this recipe and for your kind feedback. We’re so glad to hear you enjoyed it!
Thank you for sharing your cooking experience and tips with us!😊
Made this recipe for my husband and I for dinner tonight and it was delicious! This will definitely be on our go to list from now on! Thank you for such a great dish!
Hi Christine!
We are so happy to hear this recipe will be on your go-to list! Yay!
Thank you very much for trying this recipe and for your kind feedback.😊
Nami,
I love getting your newsletters–always learning something new!
Question: in this Curry Doria video, you use some kind of tool to skim fat; what is that?
Many thanks,
Ken
Hi Ken, Thank you very much for reading Nami’s newsletter and watching her video! The tool is a Japanese must-have cooking tool, Skimmer Spoon!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XP8LPCL?ref=exp_justonecookbook_dp_vv_d We hope this helps!
My kids LOVED this! It was gone (eaten) within a day.
Hi Sesame, We are so happy to hear your kids loved this Doria! Doria is our kid’s favorite too.😄 Thank you for trying this recipe!