It’s a season for Nabe – Japanese hot pot. You may know Sushi but it’s not the only Japanese food but there are many more and Nabe is one of them. When it’s getting cold, Japanese like to prepare Nabe since it is healthy, delicious and makes you warm. And most of all it is VERY easy!
We use Donabe – a thick pot made of clay.
The direction is
- Prepare soup base
- Put ingredients such as vegetables, chickens, fish and base in the Donabe.
- Cover with a lid and heat Doabe.
- Carry the Donabe to the table and place it on the portable gas burner
- Ready to eat!
So easy! Since we are cooking on the table it can make us warm and you do not need a heater 😉 Regarding the soup base and ingredients, there are as many kind as the number of prefectures in Japan, which is around 48 kinds! The common soup base ingredients are Soy sauce, Miso (soy bean paste), Dashi (Japanese broth made from dry kelp and fish flakes) or Salt and nowadays there is Korean style including Kimchi (Korean Spicy pickled cabbage). I always like to prepare a dipping sauce made with finely grated radish and carrots with Ponzu (sauce mixed with soysauce and vinegar). We always add the cooked rice & egg after almost finishing the ingredients and we eat it as a risotto in the end of Nabe. The soup becomes more flavorful so it’s so yummy!
The picture on the right is my mother’s Nabe.
Here I found a good video of cooking Nabe. You don’t need to use the vegetables which are shown in the video because I don’t think you can get everything such as Enoki from here.
I also found many recipes of Nabe on the internet. Here is one of them.
Many unknown ingredients for you might be used in the video or in this recipe but you can use any kind of vegetables and season with Soysauce, Mirin, Sake (or white wine if you don’t have) then you can make it with your pan. You can also replace Dashi (Japanese broth made from dry kelp and fish flakes) with a vegetable stock. I like the combination of Miso (soy bean paste) and ginger too. It really makes you warm 🙂
I hope this article inspired you for your cooking even if you cannot do it exactly the same as the video or the recipe!
