Chaliapin Steak Don Recipe: Onion Steak from Food Wars

Chaliapin steak don is a Japanese tender-tasting steak with chopped onions topped with fluffy rice. Although the dish isn't new in Japan, the onion steak became popular overseas as it appeared in episode 7 of the Japanese anime Food Wars: Shokugeki No Soma.

The series follows the stories of top student chefs battling each other for various rewards. In the first food war (shokugeki in Japanese), the main character, Soma, wins his first fight with a Chaliapin steak don. 

The recipes in the anime are provided by the top Japanese chef Yuri Morisaki. For our recipe, we'll be showing you her version of steak with rice to recreate this anime dish.

So, if you want to discover what makes this marvellous tenderised steak donburi, learn our shokugeki-winning recipe.

Jump to:

• Chaliapin Steak Don Ingredients
• Chaliapin Steak Don | Onion Steak Food Wars Recipe
• Cooking Tips
• How To Make Chaliapin Steak With Chicken Instead
• Variations
• What Is Chaliapin Steak?

Chaliapin Steak Don Ingredients

For our onion steak recipe, you'll need the following ingredients.

• steak
• yellow onion, grated
• salt
• ground black pepper
• butter
• olive oil
• short-grain Japanese rice, cooked
• pickled plum paste (umeboshi) (optional)
• spring onions, green part, thinly sliced, for garnishing

For garnishing, chopped green onions are typical. However, you may also use chopped parsley or coriander. 

For the Chaliapin sauce:

• yellow onion, diced
• spring onions, white part, chopped
• red wine
• soy sauce
• potato starch or corn starch
• water

Sirloin meat

Like the original recipe in the anime, we used sirloin. It's lean, flavourful, and one of the more affordable cuts. The use of affordable sirloin meat, served alongside rice, it'sis what makes the Chaliapin steak recipe in Food Wars so accessible. 

However, you can substitute the meat inside our Chaliapin steak recipe with other cuts of meat, such as tenderloin and ribeye. Tenderloin is the most tender part beneath the ribs and makes an excellent choice of meat for this Japanese rice bowl dish. Ribeye is another popular choice, as it has fat marbling, which gives it a rich, excellent flavour.

The magic of the recipe is that it can elevate any meat into a more tender cut. The anime has convinced many that we can use even cheap beef for this recipe. Even cubed steak can be an excellent choice with our recipe.

You can also prepare our recipe with chicken if you desire. Read below to learn how to recreate the recipe using chicken.

Rice

The Food Wars recipe is unique as the steak is served in a bowl ('don' in Japanese) with rice, making Chaliapin steak don.

We recommend serving it with short-grain Japanese rice, as it's slightly chewier in texture. This helps with soaking the sauce. Otherwise, regular long-grain rice, like Jasmine, is fine.

You can also buy whole umeboshi or plum paste to add to the rice. It adds a refreshing sourness to the rice that contrasts with the savouriness of the Chaliapin steak.

Butter and oil

We use a combination of butter and olive oil as they complement each other well. Butter adds richness and creaminess to the sauce, and olive oil adds a fresh aroma. They are also great for frying steak, as the addition of olive oil to butter helps prevent butter from burning easily. If you use butter by itself, it will burn easily.

Slurry

We will make a slurry with the potato starch to thicken the sauce. You can also replace it with cornstarch.

Cooking Tips

The most crucial element of Chaliapin steak is the marinade sauce and the marination process. Here are some tips to keep in mind to get the best out of your tenderised meat.

Preparing The Protein

Cutting lines in the meat or making crisscross cuts will help the onion juice seep through faster. This applies to beef and other meat types you want to use instead, like chicken.

You may also use a tenderiser tool, such as a meat maller to soften the beef further. However, this is optional. Before marinating, we also like to slice the Chaliapin steak against the grain, which makes it more tender as this technique slices the muscle fibres, loosening the slab of meat. Wrapping the slab of meat and then pounding it with a meat tenderising tool also helps to make the flesh friendly and delicate.

When you're slicing the beef after cooking, we recommend slicing it into bite-sized pieces. You can slice it into very thin slices like you would a Philly cheesesteak.

Tenderising Agent

We recommend using ½ an onion to marinate about 250 grams of steak. To extract the onion juice for marination, we suggest grating or blending the onion. We prefer grating as a lot of juice comes out, but it isn't so watery that it soaks the beef.

The more onions used, the more flavour they add to the meat. The same effect is achieved by marinating for a longer period of time. Onions add a savoury flavour compared to other tenderising agents like lemon and yoghurt.

Marination Time

One hour of marination is enough for our recipe. However, you can marinate for up to 4 hours. Any longer and the onion flavour that seeps through the steak might be a bit too strong. Therefore, we don't recommend marinating it overnight.

Frying the steak

Before frying the steak, remove all the onions that were used to marinate it. This will help to fry the meat evenly. 

We like to fry our Chaliapin steak in a 1:1 ratio of olive oil and butter. The olive oil helps prevent the butter from burning easily while enhancing the aroma.

We recognise that there are many techniques for frying beef. The method we tend to use is what we think is the simplest and easiest way to cook steak to a well-done doneness.

Add butter and olive oil to the pan under medium heat. Place your meat in the pan once the butter has completely melted and is hot. Allow it to fry untouched for 2 minutes, then flip it to fry the other side for another 2 minutes. Your Chaliapin steak should come out crusty on the outside and still slightly pinkish on the inside.

How To Make Chaliapin Steak With Chicken Instead

For our donburi recipe, you use chicken instead of beef. Chicken breasts or thighs are a great substitute. However, the tenderising effect of the onions is more obvious for beef steak cuts than chicken, as most fresh chicken meat is already relatively tender. 

To tenderise fresh chicken, cut lightly on the side of the flesh. Make horizontal cuts on one side and vertical cuts on the other side. Ensure that the width of the cuts is thinner than the meat. That way, the onion enzymes can penetrate the protein. 

Grate onions and marinate the chicken in this for at least 1 hour, up to 4 hours. Once you're ready to cook, remove the onions and season with salt and pepper to taste.

To cook the chicken, pan-fry it with butter and oil and flip it around for about 15 minutes. Finally, rest the chicken for a while before eating.

Variations

The beef slices are served medium well with rice in our Chaliapin steak don recipe. However, you can also experiment with different levels of doneness and serve the dish with vegetables. 

Boiled then sauteed potatoes with chopped parsley and watercress give the palate a more balanced taste. Otherwise, you may try preparing peas and corn for a sweeter flavour.

Place the onion-marinated beef in a sandwich for a convenient way to eat it. The bread's dry texture soaks up the marinated sauce and oil, allowing you to taste the meat. 

This beef donburi recipe and ingredients are like gyudon, or beef rice, except that gyudon has thinner beef slices.

What Is Chaliapin Steak?

Chaliapin steak is a very tender version of steak marinated with onion juice and served with more onions. What sets this version apart from other Japanese steak recipes is the onions used to soften the muscle fibres and proteins in the meat. 

Origin Story

The story of the Chaliapin steak started with a renowned Russian opera singer, Feodor Chaliapin when he visited Japan in 1927. It was said that chefs at the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, were very nervous as they heard he was a fussy eater. 

He arrived in Tokyo to perform and record some of his works, but a toothache plagued him. Despite his ills, he requested a melt-in-your-mouth steak. An ingenious chef treated the beef to meet Chaliapin's request. 

Inspired by onions in beef sukiyaki, he soaked the meat in onion juices to tenderise it. Thereafter, he served the tenderised beef piled high with chopped onions. The dish was so well-received that, as legend has it, the president of the hotel named it "Chaliapin's Steak" in honour of the musician.

It was the proteolytic enzymes in onions that broke down the proteins in the beef meat. But you can also marinate the meat in acidic ingredients such as lemon, pineapple, vinegar, and even yoghurt to achieve the same effect. 

Now, you are ready to declare yourself an accomplished fan of Food Wars after you've cooked this.

Interestingly enough, in the anime, they chose the rice option, as in that episode, the characters are debating over the value of donburi. In Japanese culture, donburi is the equivalent of American fast food since it is supposed to be easy to make. 

Perhaps after trying out this Chaliapin steak don recipe, its cleverness and convenience might also win you over.

If our recipe has inspired you, share it on Instagram and tag @honestfoodtalks. Next up, try our Katsu sando recipe for another quick and easy Japanese meal.