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Sitting on the floor and gathered around a low-to-ground table, you and a group
of friends hold your chopsticks anxiously above a pot positioned directly in the
center of the table. As you’re enjoying the company and conversation, your meal
is cooking right on the dining table, on a small portable stove! Once the beef,
tofu, noodles, and vegetables have finished cooking, a friendly competition ensues
where you each take turns reaching into the pot with your chopsticks to claim the
finest choices!
Some restaurants claim they’ll make food “how you like it,” but in Japan, the dish
sukiyaki literally means “sautéed [or grilled] as you like it.” A popular dish in
Japan in the cold months, sukiyaki is so named because meat or tofu is sautéed in
a pan or simmered in a hot pot along with a wide variety of accompanying ingredients.
(You choose the ingredients “you like.”) Sukiyaki is a common nabemono (“cooking
pot things”) meal in Japan, which are sometimes called “steamboat” or “one pot”
dishes in English.
History
You may hear the tale of a Japanese aristocrat who, on a return trip from hunting,
demanded that a peasant cook his prey for him and the peasant developed sukiyaki
by grilling the meat on his suki (spade). But sukiyaki’s true roots trace back to
the late 19th century after Japan once again opened its ports to foreign visitors.
Although cattle and beef have existed in Japan since the 2nd century, due to Buddhist
principals, Japanese agriculture, and Japan’s maritime borders, Japanese diet at
the time consisted primarily of seafood, starches, and vegetables. Westerners convinced
the Japanese to more frequently add foods like beef, milk, and eggs to their diet.
Sukiyaki developed as a Japanese way to cook these foods in a familiar style. (Previous
nabemono dishes included the common seafood, vegetables, and starch ingredients.)
Preparing the Dish
Although different regions of Japan have their own ways of preparing sukiyaki, there
are two primary methods of making the dish: completely in the pot or on a skillet.
The first method (called the Tokyo, or Kanto, method) requires a shallow cast iron
pot filled with sukiyaki sauce, which is a mixture of sake, sugar, soy sauce, raw
eggs, and a rice wine called mirin. The cook adds thinly sliced beef and then slowly
adds his or her choice of tofu, scallions, mushrooms, noodles, Chinese cabbage,
and shungiku (leaves from a type of chrysanthemum). The ingredients slowly simmer
and are served dipped in a raw egg.
The second style of preparing sukiyaki (called the Kansai method) requires a skillet.
The thin strips of beef are completely cooked on the skillet in beef fat before
any other ingredients are added. The beef is then covered in sugar and sukiyaki
sauce and whatever other ingredients the cook prefers (usually the same ingredients
in the Kanto method). The rest of the ingredients then simmer for a time until cooked.
The Beef
Although tofu can be the main ingredient of sukiyaki for vegetarians, beef really
is the staple of the dish. The kind and cut of beef is essential to making delicious
sukiyaki. Beef in sukiyaki should be very tender. The best beef for the dish is
the expensive shimofuri beef, which has a lot of fat. However, most people can’t
afford to use shimofuri each time they make sukiyaki.
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