Flavor Planet

If you are familiar with Japanese hot pot dish, you have probably heard of Sukiyaki. A one-pot dish with thinly sliced beef and assorted vegetables cooked or simmered in a sweet soy sauce based broth. Hot Pot (Sukiyaki) for One is one of the most popular hot pot styles among Japanese and wildly known outside of Japan. Generally a winter dish, the warm and comforting sukiyaki is a delicious way to warm your up on cold winter nights.

Sukiyaki is usually cooked in a shallow cast iron pot over a portable gas stove at the dinning table. If you don’t have a cast iron pot nor a portable gas stove (neither did I), don’t worry. We can still enjoy this delicious food by using other types of cookware such as a clay pot and cooking on stove top.

Other than thinly sliced beef (ribeye), popular ingredients cooked with the beef include leafy vegetables, tofu, mushroom and so on. For this recipe, I used nappa cabbage, enoki mushroom, firm tofu and carrot. These ingredients can be substituted with what’s easy to find in where you live. For example, instead of nappa cabbage, you can use spinach or bok choy.

The soy based broth for sukiyaki is very easy to make. Simply combine mirin (Japanese sweet cooking wine), soy sauce, water (or sake) as well as sugar and bring it to a boil.

Beef for sukiyaki: 

When you are at a Japanese grocery store, you could easily find pre-sliced and prepackaged beef in the meat section. Look for the package specifically labeled as beef for Sukiyaki (store-sold sukiyaki beef can be expensive). If you can’t find pre-sliced beef or want to save money (who doesn’t), a great idea is to visit your local butcher shop and have them give you a piece of well-marbled ribeye meat and sliced it yourself at home (cuts for sukiyaki are about 1/8-inch thick).

There are two main styles of sukiyaki, the Kanto style (from eastern Japan) and Kansai style (from western Japan). Kanto style makes the broth first, and all the ingredients are cooked at the same time in the broth; while people in western Japan like to first sear and enjoy some of the beef first before adding the rest of the ingredients to the pot. This sukiyaki recipe is Kanto styles.

I hope you enjoy making this sukiyaki. If you like this recipe, please leave a rating and share it with your friends!

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