Sukiyaki

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Common sukiyaki at home.

Closeup of pot.

Traditional Yokohama-style gyunabe.

Sukiyaki (Japanese: 鋤焼 or more commonly すき焼き; スキヤキ) is a Japanese dish in the nabemono (Japanese Hot pot) style.

It consists of meat (usually thinly sliced beef), or a vegetarian version made only with firm tofu, slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Before being eaten, the ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of raw, beaten eggs.

Generally sukiyaki is a single dish for the colder days of the year and it is commonly found at bōnenkai, Japanese year-end parties. There is a theme in Japanese comedy that one can make passable sukiyaki even on a very tight budget.^{[citation needed]}

Ingredients

Thinly sliced beef is usually used for sukiyaki; although in the past, in certain parts of the country (notably Hokkaidō and Niigata), pork was also popular.

Popular ingredients cooked with the beef are:

• Tofu (usually seared firm tofu)
• Negi (a type of scallion)
• Leafy vegetables, such as Chinese cabbage and shungiku (Garland chrysanthemum leaves)
• Mushrooms such as shiitake and enokitake
• Jelly-noodles made out of konnyaku corm such as ito konnyaku or shirataki noodles. It is advisable to place these away from the beef because the calcium contained in the noodles can toughen meat.

Boiled wheat udon or soba (buckwheat) noodles are sometimes added, usually at the end to soak up the broth.

Preparation

Like other nabemono dishes, each Japanese region has a preferred way of cooking sukiyaki. The key difference is between the Kansai region in western Japan and the Kantō region in eastern Japan. In the Kantō (Tokyo) region, the ingredients are stewed in a prepared mixture of soy sauce, sugar, sake and mirin, whereas in Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto region), the meat is first grilled in the pan greased with tallow. After other ingredients are put over these, the liquid is poured into the pan. The shungiku are added when all the ingredients are simmering. A raw egg is broken into a serving bowl, one egg for each person. Some prefer to add a bit of soy sauce and the egg is lightly beaten. The meat and vegetables are dipped into this sauce before being eaten.

History

Some anecdotes are known for the early history of sukiyaki. One is about a medieval nobleman. He stopped at a peasant's hut after a hunt and ordered him to cook the game. The peasant realized that his cooking utensils were improper for the noble, so he cleaned up his spade (suki in Japanese) and broiled (yaki) the meat on it. ^[1] Another story is about the Portuguese in the sixteenth century in Japan, where beef was not common food. They eagerly ate animals everywhere, even on suki.^{[citation needed]}

In the 1890s when Japan was opened to foreigners, new cooking styles were also introduced. Cows, milk, meat, and egg became widely used, and sukiyaki was the most popular way to serve them. The first sukiyaki restaurant, Isekuma, opened in Yokohama in 1862.

Beef is the primary ingredient in today's sukiyaki. There were two main ways of cooking sukiyaki: a Kantō (Tokyo area) and a Kansai (Osaka area) style. In the Kantō way, the special cooking sauce's ingredients are already mixed. In the Kansai way, the sauce is mixed at the time of eating. But after the great Kanto earthquake of 1923, the people of Kantō, temporarily moved to the Osaka area. While the people of Kantō were in Osaka, they got accustomed to the Kansai style of sukiyaki, and when they returned to Kantō, they introduced the Kansai sukiyaki style, where it has since become popular.

Sukiyaki outside of Japan

Sukiyaki has become very popular outside Japan and many people consider it an elegant dish world-wide. Many restaurants around the world carry sukiyaki, with their own variations.

Thai suki

A hot pot dish called Thai suki or Thai sukiyaki is very popular in Thailand and, increasingly, neighboring countries. Despite the name, it bears only a vague resemblance to Japanese sukiyaki.

See also

Yoshio Tachibana

References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2009)

• A taste of Japan, Donald Richie, Kodansha, 2001 ISBN 4770017073

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sukiyaki

• More on the history of Sukiyaki