Enjoy your special date night with Seafood Doria! This is an impressive yet simple Japanese rice gratin dish topped with your choice of seafood and cheese over buttery rice.
What’s your favorite comfort dish that comes to mind when the weather is cold outside? Growing up in Japan, one of those dishes for me was Seafood Doria (シーフードドリア).
What is Doria?
Some of you may not have heard of Doria before. Doria (ドリア) is a Japanese rice gratin dish with various ingredients on top. It’s one of the signature Yoshoku (洋食, western-influenced Japanese dish) menus along with Hambagu, Omurice, and Napolitan spaghetti.
Typical Doria consists of steamed rice, covered with savory ingredients with sauce, and topped with melted cheese. The classic sauce is Bechamel sauce, also known as white sauce. This dish was invented in 1930s by Swiss chef Saly Weil, the first master chef at Hotel New Grand in Yokohama, Japan.
I love Doria so much that I’ve shared non-white sauce variations of my Doria, Curry Doria, and Meat Doria recipes on my blog. Throughout the years, I received a lot of requests for the classic Seafood Doria recipe, so I am really excited to share the recipe and video tutorial with you today!
4 Components to Seafood Doria
1. Butter Rice
For Doria, you can use regular steamed rice to cut down on calories. However, I highly suggest making butter rice and indulge in the ultimate Seafood Doria experience. You can add garlic and make it garlic butter rice, or add chopped parsley and make parsley butter rice (2 of my favorite).
In today’s recipe, I sautéed onion and mushrooms with butter before adding cooked rice in the pan. It adds more flavors to the dish and it’s so delicious! Feel free to replace butter with olive oil for lighter on calories.
2. Seafood & Toppings
This is where you can be creative with the dish and use your favorite choices of seafood. In today’s recipe, I put what you commonly see in Seafood Doria in Japan, shrimp, clams, scallops, and calamari. Feel free to add what you like! Mussels are a good choice too.
If you’re not a seafood fan, you can use chicken (however, beef or pork are not common for Doria) or try different vegetables of your choice.
3. Bechamel Sauce
The sauce I used is also known as white sauce. An equal part of butter and flour (by volume) are cooked together to make a roux, then heated milk is added to the roux and cooked till the right consistency.
It’s good to remember 1 – 3 tablespoon each of butter and flour per cup of milk, depending on the thickness of sauce you desire. Today my recipe used a middle range of thickness: 2 Tbsp (butter) : 2 Tbsp (flour) : 1 cup (milk) ratio (but I doubled it).
In Japan, Bechamel sauce is used in many Yoshoku dishes, including White Stew (ホワイトシチュー), Cream Croquette (クリームコロッケ), creamy pasta, gratin and doria.
4. Cheese
For gratins and Dorias, I love using flavorful cheese like Gruyère that is creamy but has a bit of salty taste to it. I sometimes add two types of cheese to add some complexity, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese is always a good choice to add some accent.
Other Casserole Recipes
Watch How To Make Seafood Doria
Seafood Doria is a popular Japanese yoshoku dish, this delicious dish features creamy seafood over buttery rice and topped with cheese.
Japanese Ingredient Substitution: If you want to look for substitutes for Japanese condiments and ingredients, click here.
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Seafood Doria
Video
Ingredients
- ½ Tbsp unsalted butter (for greasing gratin dishes)
- 1 head broccoli
- ¼ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt (for blanching)
- Gruyere cheese (for topping)
- 2 Tbsp panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) (for topping)
- Italian parsley (for garnish)
Butter Rice
- ½ onion
- 4 mushrooms (cremini or button)
- 1 ½ Tbsp unsalted butter (if you use salted, reduce adding salt while cooking)
- 4 servings cooked Japanese short-grain rice (2 rice-cooker-cups (180 ml x 2 = 360 ml) yields roughly 4 servings (3 ½ US cups); see how to cook short-grain rice with a rice cooker, a pot over the stove, an instant pot, or a donabe)
- ⅛ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- ⅛ tsp freshly ground black pepper
Seafood & Sauce
- 16 manila clams
- 24 baby scallops
- 12 large shrimps
- 4 small calamari
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- ½ cup white wine (or water)
Bechamel Sauce
- 4 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 4 Tbsp all-purpose flour (plain flour)
- 2 cups warm milk
- ¼ cup reserved seafood sauce (see the instructions)
- freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tsp soy sauce
Instructions
- Gather all the ingredients.
Preparation:
- Grease the gratin dishes with ½ Tbsp (7 g) butter.
- Using the tip of a sharp knife or hands, cut off the smaller stalks of broccoli from the larger central stalk to remove whole florets, rotating the head of broccoli as you go.
- In a small saucepan, bring water to a rapid boil. Add a big pinch of salt. Add the broccoli florets and cook until crisp-tender, 1 to 1.5 minutes. Remove with a fine mesh and plunge immediately in the ice water to stop cooking. Drain and set aside.
Butter Rice:
- Chop the onion finely and cut the mushrooms into thin slices.
- In a large frying pan, heat 1 ½ Tbsp (21 g) butter over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until tender.
- Add the mushrooms and sauté till tender. Then add the steamed rice, break the big chunks of rice and combine well.
- Season with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Divide the rice into 4 portions and transfer to the individual gratin dishes. Cover with aluminum foil and keep warm.
Seafood Mix:
- Clean clams and scallops. Peel and devein shrimp if necessary. Cut the squid body into rings. Also cut the garlic cloves into thin slices.
- In a large frying pan, heat 2 Tbsp olive oil and cook sliced garlic on medium heat until fragrant. Then add all the seafood into the pan.
- Stir fry to coat the seafood with oil. Add ½ cup white wine and cover with a lid. Cook covered until all the clams open up.
- Once all the clam shells are open (dispose of any unopened ones), season with freshly ground black pepper. Then remove all the seafood to a plate/bowl and cover with aluminum foil, set aside.
- Reduce the remaining seafood sauce in the frying pan until the sauce is reduced in half, roughly ¼ cup. Keep the sauce in a bowl or measuring cup.
Bechamel Sauce:
- In a large frying, heat 4 Tbsp (56 g) unsalted butter on medium-low heat. Once melted, add 4 Tbsp all-purpose flour to the pan.
- Blend the flour with butter until no more lumps. Keep stirring to avoid burning the roux.
- Gradually add warm milk, a tiny bit at a time. Combine the flour mixture and milk well, scraping the bottom of the pan, before adding more milk.
- Once blended well, season with kosher salt. Add ¼ cup reserved seafood sauce and keep stirring to combine with the béchamel sauce.
- Add 1 tsp soy sauce and mix well to combine. Keep stirring and cook on low heat until the desired consistency.
Assembly:
- When the sauce consistency thickens and you can draw a line on the bottom of the pan, add the seafood.
- Mix well and add the blanched broccoli.
- Pour the seafood mix and béchamel sauce on the butter rice in gratin dishes. Make sure each one gets all the different ingredients.
- Sprinkle with freshly grated Gruyere cheese and panko bread crumbs for crispy texture.
- Set the oven setting to broil (high) and preheat for 5 minutes. Broil for 2-3 minutes until the cheese has melted and turns golden color on top. Garnish with parsley and serve warm.
To Store
- Keep the leftover in an airtight container and store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days and in the freezer for a month.
