Niku Jaga

Niku jaga, literally meat and potatoes, is like the poster child for "mom's flavor" in Japanese home cooking. As a hearty dish with a warm and kind flavor, it's not hard to understand why. The dish is stewed in your usual dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and sake plus a little bit of sugar. Here's an interesting story about the birth of nikujaga: an officer in the Japanese navy who studied abroad in England loved the beef stew he ate there so much that when he came back to Japan, he asked the cooks in the navy to recreate the dish. The cooks had no idea what beef stew was and ended up creating their own yummy Japanese version.