Eel and ginger rice bowl

Name: Eel and ginger rice bowl
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients: Prepared eel 250 g; Cooked brown rice 2 bowls; Ginger 1 thumb-sized piece; Gim (laver sheets) 2 sheets; Salt a pinch; Lemon 1/2

Salt-grilled rather than glazed. Most of the gap between eel's 184 kcal and what reaches the table comes from that glaze.

2 servings25 min

Ingredients

Prepared eel250 g
Cooked brown rice2 bowls
Ginger1 thumb-sized piece
Gim (laver sheets)2 sheets
Salta pinch
Lemon1/2

Method

Cut the ginger into very fine matchsticks and soak them in cold water for five minutes, then drain. That takes the edge off.
Salt the eel lightly and leave it ten minutes.
Grill skin-side first, in a pan or a 180 °C oven. Do not grill it hard and long — the fat-soluble vitamins leave with the fat.
Turn and cook the flesh side another three or four minutes. It must be cooked right through.
Put the brown rice in bowls and lay the eel on top.
Scatter the ginger, snip the laver over it, and squeeze the lemon at the table.

Cooking note

The soy-sugar-syrup glaze usual with grilled eel is left out here. The 184 kcal per 100 g is for raw eel, and a reduced glaze adds energy, sugar and sodium on top. That is why the gap between the composition table and the plate is unusually wide for this ingredient.

Ginger is not only for the smell. It has long been used to help with digesting a fatty dish.

One thing to remember: eel must always be cooked through. Its serum carries a toxin that only heat destroys — this is not a fish to eat raw.

And keep this bowl occasional. 250 g of eel is around 2,600 µg of vitamin A, and that is the retinol form, the one with a 3,000 µg RAE upper limit.

Ingredients used here

Seafood

Nutrition data

Eel

23.3 µg of vitamin D per 100 g, the highest on this site. But it also carries 1,043 µg of vitamin A, in the form that has an upper limit.

Grains & legumes

Moderate evidence

Brown rice

People who eat more whole grains consistently show less type 2 diabetes. In randomised trials, though, the glycaemic markers barely moved.

Herbs & spices

Strong evidence

Ginger

Gingerol, the pungent compound in ginger, has its strongest evidence for easing nausea and aiding digestion. One to three grams a day is enough.

Seafood

Early research

Gim (laver)

Seaweed's vitamin B12 was long dismissed as an unusable analogue. A 2024 randomised trial found otherwise.