Passport & Plate - Sukiyaki
Japan | Thursday, March 5, 2015 | 5 photos
Ingredients
Ingredients
• ½ head napa cabbage
• ½ bunch shungiku/kikuna (garland chrysanthemum)
• 1 carrot
• 1 scallion
• 1 package enoki mushrooms
• 6 shiitake mushrooms
• 1 package medium-firm tofu
• 1 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1 lb thinly sliced rib eye
• 1 Tbsp. brown sugar
• 1 package shirataki noodles (yam noodles)
• 1-2 packages udon
Sukiyaki Sauce
• 1 cup sake (either drinking or cooking sake)
• 1 cup mirin
• 1/5-1/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup light soy sauce
• ~1 cup dashi (you may create your own from scratch or instant stock. If unavailable, substitute with water)
How to prepare this recipe1) For the sauce: Mix sake, mirin, sugar and soy sauce in a bowl under sugar dissolves. Set aside.
2) Prepare vegetables.
a. Slice napa cabbage leaves in half vertically and then horizontally.
b. Remove stems from shungiku and discard.
c. Slice carrots and scallions into ¼ inch rounds.
d. Slice shiitake mushrooms into small pieces, about 1 inch in length.
e. Remove about 1 inch from bottom of enoki bundle and discard.
f. Dice tofu into 1” cubes and set aside.
3) Heat up hot pot or large sauce pan/wok over medium-heat. Once pan is warm, add cooking oil. Add beef and dust tops with brown sugar. Cook until beef is no longer red, about 20-30 seconds.
4) Add sukiyaki sauce + dashi (amount according to your taste – dashi will dilute the sauce). Heat mixture over medium-high heat until boiling. Simmer over medium-low heat.
5) Begin adding ingredients, starting with cabbage, carrots, scallion, shiitake, enoki, and tofu. Add shungiku after to prevent overcooking. Add shirtaki noodles and simmer together until ingredients are soft (few minutes)
6) Serve!
7) At the end of the meal, add udon noodles to soak up remaining broth.
Optional: Sukiyaki is usually served with raw egg as dipping sauce, which adds a slightly sweet quality. Feel free to add this as a finishing touch.
These are traditional sukiyaki ingredients, but feel free to add other vegetables or types of thinly sliced meat. Remember, sukiyaki should be fun and satisfying, so go with whatever pleases your palate. Happy eating!
The story behind this recipeFinding Family via Sukiyaki
Hiroshima seemed like a distant “eventual”, a place I’d visit at some point during a trip to Japan but certainly not during my first. And yet here I was, visiting my sister’s one-time host family at the beginning of a frosty January evening. "How should I act in the home of strangers in a foreign land?" I continued to ask myself from the time the bullet train sped through the countryside up to the moment we were finally seated at Obaasan’s kitchen table.
“Douzo,” Obaasan softly said, placing the cast-iron hotpot between us before taking her seat next to Ojisan. We began to add ingredients one by one to the warm, sweet-salty stew, starting with slices of napa cabbage and shiitake. There was something unbelievably cozy and familial about communal cooking, and the glimmer in Obaasan’s eyes hinted that this was a fact she already knew.
As the sukiyaki continued to simmer, the mood brightened and the bond deepened. Obaasan and Ojisan laughed as I told them tales of drunken karaoke in Tokyo and deer-feeding mishaps in Nara (such as a deer ramming my friend’s butt) and listened intently as I described the charm of old Kyoto alleys. I, too, learned about Obaasan and Ojisan’s life, from their years in Hiroshima before the war to the years after in the U.S. By the time the beef, tofu, and noodles were finally cooked, the three of us had already been conversing as if we had known each other much longer than two hours. I felt a sense of comfort and finally, after five months abroad, a true sense of home.
Six years later, I still think of that stately, traditional Hiroshima home, with the ends of its roof smiling towards the peach-violet sky and its garden filled with sculpted spruces and rocks resting in early evening. And I still think of Obaasan and Ojisan as family, writing to them from time to time. Never underestimate sukiyaki’s power to warm, comfort, and nourish a wintry heart - something tells me Obaasan never did, and that I never will.
