How to Make Tai Meshi with Leftover Baked Sea Bream 鯛飯

After enjoying Japanese Baked Sea Bream, you probably end up with sea bream bones, the head, and maybe some meat. Today, I’ll show you how to reuse the leftover goodies to make another wonderful dish—Tai Meshi or Japanese Sea Bream Rice (鯛飯).

Table of Contents

• What is Tai Meshi?
• Ingredients You’ll Need
• How to Make Tai Meshi with Leftover Baked Sea Bream
• Use a Donabe or Heavy-Bottomed Pot
• Tips on How to Make Tai Meshi

What is Tai Meshi?

Tai Meshi or Taimeshi (鯛飯) is seasoned rice cooked with sea bream. Depending on your preference, there are a number of ways to make this dish. You can either cook the rice with the head of broiled sea bream, whole uncooked (raw) sea bream, or dashi soup stock made from leftovers. Regardless of how you cook it, it is a lot less work than it seems.

We’ll be using the leftovers from my Japanese Baked Sea Bream recipe to make Tai Meshi. It’s the best way to stretch a prized ingredient into two luxurious meals.

Ingredients You’ll Need

1. leftover cooked whole sea bream — I used half of the meat of the sea bream to cook 2 rice cooker cups of rice.
2. Japanese short-grain rice
3. kombu — for umami
4. sake — to remove the fish odor and make the rice plump
5. soy sauce — for color and subtle saltiness
6. kosher salt
7. knob ginger

How to Make Tai Meshi with Leftover Baked Sea Bream

1. Remove the fish meat from the sea bream bone. Don’t waste any of it!
2. Make the bone broth with the fishbones and head.
3. Cook the rice with bone broth, sake, soy sauce, salt, and kombu.
4. Discard the kombu and fluff the rice.
5. Gently stir in the leftover fish meat and thin slices of ginger. Serve it with sansho pepper!

Use a Donabe or Heavy-Bottomed Pot

I highly recommend using a heavy-bottomed large pot with a lid like a Japanese donabe (I used Kamado-san) or a Dutch oven, as they’re more suited for even cooking. If you use a thin-bottomed pot, the hot spots may burn the rice. Alternatively, you can cook it in a rice cooker using the same instructions. 

Tips on How to Make Tai Meshi

• Skim the fish broth. It is no doubt tedious work, but diligently skimming all the foam and scum from the broth will pay off. Removing impurities is very important for a clean-tasting and refined rice dish.
• Soak the rice. Japanese short-grain rice is rounder than other types of rice. Therefore, it requires a bit more time to soak up water to the core of the rice. You’ll have moist and tender rice if you soak it for 20–30 minutes.
• Measure the soy sauce and sake before adding the fish broth. To cook 2 rice cooker cups of rice in the donabe, you will need 400 ml of broth. In a measuring cup, add the soy sauce, sake, and other “liquids” first, then fill up with fish broth until it reaches 400 ml.
• Remove the fish bones as best you can. When you remove the meat from the fish, do your best to remove smaller bones, so you can fully enjoy the dish. You don’t want the drama of fishbone stuck in your throat.
• Add ginger to your liking. It may seem like a lot, but the ginger bestows a refreshing taste and fragrance. You will be surprised how much you like it. If your ginger is too spicy, soak it in water, squeeze it out, and add to the rice. Younger ginger with tender skin (not necessarily young ginger) tends to taste milder.

Cozy yet sophisticated, Tai Meshi is a thing of beauty. I hope you get a chance to serve this dish at your New Year’s table.

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4.65 from 14 votes

Tai Meshi with Leftover Baked Sea Bream

by Namiko Hirasawa Chen

Flavored with a savory sea bream bone broth, Tai Meshi or Japanese Sea Bream Rice is an elegant rice dish for special occasions. I'll show you how to make Tai Meshi with leftover baked sea bream in a donabe. It's incredibly fragrant and tastes heavenly!

Prep: 15 minutes mins

Cook: 30 minutes mins

Soaking + Steaming: 40 minutes mins

Total: 45 minutes mins

Servings: 4

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Ingredients 

US CustomaryMetric

 

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For Rice

• 2 rice cooker cups uncooked Japanese short-grain white rice (360 ml, 300 g)
• 1 piece kombu (dried kelp) (5 g; 2 inches x 2 inches or 5 cm x 5 cm)
• ½ lb sea bream meat (227 g; leftover from Japanese Baked Sea Bream)
• 1 knob ginger (2” or 5 cm)
• Japanese sansho pepper (for

For Fish Broth

• 1 cooked sea bream bone and head (leftover from Japanese Baked Sea Bream)
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp sake
• ¼ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt

Instructions

• Before You Start…Please note that this recipe requires 40 minutes of soaking and steaming time.

  Gather all the ingredients. For this recipe, I use a 3-cup size double-lid donabe rice cooker called Kamado-san.
  

To Make Fish Broth

• Note: The fish broth can be made a day ahead and refrigerated. With a spoon, remove the inside of the fish head. Keep the main fish bones for the broth, but discard any tiny bones, the fins, and the tail.
  
• Place the fish bones and head in a medium/large pot and fill up the pot with water, just to cover them.
  
• Bring the water to a boil over medium heat. Once boiling, skim the foam and scrum with a fine-mesh skimmer. Lower the heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes while skimming occasionally. We want clean broth for the rice.
  
• After 10 minutes of simmering, strain the bones and broth over a fine-mesh strainer placed over a large bowl or another pot. Discard the bones and head, and let the broth cool to room temperature.
  

To Make Tai Meshi

• Rinse the short-grain rice (If you are not sure how to rinse rice, see this post) and drain well. Transfer to a donabe (I use a Kamado-san) or a medium pot.
  
• In a 2-cup measuring cup, add soy sauce and sake first. Then pour the fish broth until the amount is 400 ml (should be 1 ¾ cup minus 1 Tbsp).
  
• Add salt and mix well together. Then transfer to the donabe (pot).
  
• Flatten the rice and add a piece of kombu on top. Put the lid on (for Kamadosan, put internal and external lids). Let the rice soak in the broth for 20-30 minutes.
  
• Cook on medium-high heat (or medium heat on a professional gas stove) for 13-15 minutes.
  
• If you are using a Kamado-san, remove from the heat 2-3 minutes after the steam starts puffing from the top lid (see left pic below). Each gas stove is different, so this is a good sign to follow. Let it stand for 20 minutes, without opening the lid.
  

To Serve

• Shave off the skin of ginger with a knife and cut it into thin slices. Then cut it into thin julienned pieces.
  
• Break the fish meat into smaller bite-size pieces. If the fish was in the fridge, you may want to reheat it in the microwave. Open the lid (double lids, if using Kamado-san).
  
• Remove the kombu (you can discard or reuse it to make simmered kombu) and gently fluff the rice with a rice paddle.
  
• Add half of the fish meat and julienned ginger and mix gently. Then transfer the rest of the fish meat to the rice. Garnish with the rest of the ginger on top. Serve into individual bowls and sprinkle some sansho pepper if you like. Enjoy!
  

To Store

• You can keep the leftover in an airtight container for up to 2-3 days or in the freezer for up to 1 month.

Notes

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.

Nutrition

Calories: 410kcal, Carbohydrates: 61g, Protein: 27g, Fat: 4g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Sodium: 622mg, Potassium: 78mg, Fiber: 2g, Sugar: 1g, Vitamin C: 1mg, Calcium: 5mg, Iron: 3mg