Japanese Foods--nabe

[JasonTrue]

Funny, I've started to eat nabe by myself because it takes only a few minutes of preparation and is comforting on a cold night, and can be scaled down to one person with minimal effort.

I've made

Takikomi Gohan in Donabe.

I'm a month late for nabe no hi (nabe day) but I recently bought this cool nabe because I have been wanting to have some nabe parties. I live alone so I don't eat nabe very often but there are lots of dishes I want to try. One thing I want to try, that was in vogue this year, is cooking rice in my nabe. It has straight sides so I think it would be suitable for cooking rice. Does anyone else do this? My rice cooker has been broken for almost a year so I am very used to cooking rice on the stove top. why not use the donabe?

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[Hiroyuki]

This is the recipe I think I'll follow if I ever get a donabe. You may say, "YOU DON'T HAVE A DONABE??" No, I don't. There are all sorts of reasons why I don't.

One caution: You can't get good gohan (cooked rice) unless you cook okome (uncooked rice) for at least 20 minutes, as the recipe says.

[rykomatsu]

Funny, I've started to eat nabe by myself because it takes only a few minutes of preparation and is comforting on a cold night, and can be scaled down to one person with minimal effort.

this is very true lol. Cut up the ingredients while you're preparing stock (if you use stock), dump everything in, cover, wait a few min, voila. i've been known to eat nabe 5 days out of the week sometimes...add to that, since gas burners are portable, sometimes i just prepare something at my desk while working into the wee hours of the night

Edited December 7, 2007 by rykomatsu (log)

[shinju]

Funny, I've started to eat nabe by myself because it takes only a few minutes of preparation and is comforting on a cold night, and can be scaled down to one person with minimal effort.

this is very true lol. Cut up the ingredients while you're preparing stock (if you use stock), dump everything in, cover, wait a few min, voila. i've been known to eat nabe 5 days out of the week sometimes...add to that, since gas burners are portable, sometimes i just prepare something at my desk while working into the wee hours of the night

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Me three. I did not care for any nabemono when I was young and just recently started liking them very much. I like the idea of adding tofu and eating them when they become fuwa fuwa with ponzu sauce.

[smallworld]

I'm a month late for nabe no hi (nabe day) but I recently bought this cool nabe because I have been wanting to have some nabe parties. I live alone so I don't eat nabe very often but there are lots of dishes I want to try. One thing I want to try, that was in vogue this year, is cooking rice in my nabe. It has straight sides so I think it would be suitable for cooking rice. Does anyone else do this? My rice cooker has been broken for almost a year so I am very used to cooking rice on the stove top. why not use the donabe?

←

I cook my rice in a donabe occasionally, it's really delicious. I posted a recipe on my blog here, but it's really not that different from cooking rice in a regular pot.

The terra cotta nabe you bought looks good, but to me it looks like it would be better for stove-top/oven cookery than table-top nabe cooking due to the high straight sides. But the fact that it is oven-safe is very cool-- I've been looking to buy a good but reasonably priced oven-safe pot for a long time without sucess.

Have you tried it out yet? Very interested to hear how you like it.

[_john]

I have made rice in it 3 times and I'm pretty satisfied with it. The texture of the rice is noticeably different in a good way. It seems firmer but not dryer, same amount of water, better penetration and distribution. This is probably due to the heavy lid (which has no hole in it so it makes a good seal) and the heat distribution and retention properties of terracotta. I think it is fine for tabletop nabemono, my table is quite low. I set it up on the portable burner and it seemed workable. One problem I ran into is that because there is no hole in the top when it cools there can be some suction holding the lid on, a few seconds on the heat made it easy to take off however.

I also used it to make no-knead bread in my oven. $30 La Cloche! Great results. There is a Muji in New York now, and in the U.K. I wonder if they carry it.

It says not to fry things in it, probably for a good reason. I sort of wanted to use it for my yamiage party

[rykomatsu]

rice in a nabe can be great. I actually did this for about 2-3 months while I was deciding on a rice cooker (and still am as I forgot that I needed a stupid transformer after importing one from japan ) It ends up being personal preference, but I really like the aroma that okoge (burnt rice) imparts on the rice when you open the lid. I know quite a few people that don't like that scent, but I love it...especially when you prepare zosui with it

Unfortunately, I only have 1 nabe, so it's kinda hard to prepare nabemono when i'm also using it to make rice

[_john]

wow! yami age was a big success. I did it in the image of Osaka's Shinsekai Kushikatsu restaurants. There were two sauces chocolate sauce and kushikatsu sauce which is like worchester sauce. Unlimited cabbage was provided just like kushikatsu places. Here are some of the ingreidents I fried: kumquat, tomato, jalapeno, roll cabbage, kyoto red carrot, shiitake, spinach ohitashi style, banana, marshmallow, scallop, nankin (a type of pumpkin that is eaten on 12/22), tsudachi mochi, yomogimochi, yomogi dango, sausage, cheese mochi, strawberry, asparagus, cherry tomato, camembert, etc. there were a few more I can't remember. kumquat in chocolate sauce was my favorite. the yomogi mochi was the surprise hit. lots of fun!

[jedi_pocky]

john ^ cool! wish there were more pictures, esoecially the various reactions upon biting into the food

im not chickensh-t to eat unidentified stuff. well i guess the fun is in the watching eh?

the yami oden sounds more scary as you can just about dump ANYTHinG including garbage and old socks into the soup. wasabi?? ekk!!!

[Hiroyuki]

No explanation of the sign "Nido zuke kinshi OK!!!" for the international audience?

Sounds interesting, but I don't want to join in!

So, tell me, who paid all the expenses?

[_john]

二度づけ禁止! ni do dzuke kinshi This is a sign that is very famous in kushikatsu restaurants. It means no double dipping! my version: 二度づけ禁止OK! means that is ok to double dip if you want. There are many variations of this sign, they are a good way to study Osaka's dialect. I was asked by the owner of a famous shop to write a sign in English because he had many foreign customers

I made the batter and bought fresh oil, about 500¥. Then I asked everyone to bring one normal ingredient and two unusual ones. So everyone paid for themselves. Some people brought drinks too. But, of course, I washed all the dishes!

[Hiroyuki]

Thanks for the explanation.

Two things I didn't know about kushikatsu:

1. You can have as much cabbage as you want in kushikatsu restaurants in Osaka. In other words, キャベツ食べ放題!

2. The kushikatsu sauce is much thinner than I thought. You can make kushikatsu sauce by mixing Worcester sauce and 20-30% broth (such as instant consomme powder).

from here (Japanese only)

[azarashi sushi]

Hi Forum!

When making nabe I always buy a ready prepared soup (I'm lazy!) ... My favourite is tonyu & goma and would really like to make it myself.

Does anyone have a good recipe?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Hiroyuki]

Sorry, I'm not much of a nabe fan, and I don't have a recipe.

I googled "sesame soy milk nabe" in Japanese (ゴマ 豆乳 鍋 actually), I got some recipes.

First two of those recipes:

From http://tounabe.seesaa.net/

豆乳：4カップ

水：1カップ

鶏がらスープの素：小さじ3杯

ごま：大さじ4杯

にんにく：1片

4 cups (i.e. 200 ml x 4 = 800 ml) soy milk

1 cup (200 ml) water

3 tbp instant chicken soup powder

4 tbsp sesame seeds, ground

1 knob garlic

The recipe says to put ground sesame seeds immediately before eating.

From http://minyako.blog14.fc2.com/blog-entry-387.html

和風だし　　　　　２５０ｃｃ

豆乳　　　　　　　２５０ｃｃ

みそ　　　　　　　大さじ２

練りゴマ　　　　　大さじ１

250 ml Japanese dashi

250 ml soy milk

2 tbsp miso

1 tbsp sesame paste

[azarashi sushi]

Thanks for that Hiroyuki.

Usually I'm not such a big nabe fan either. I do like to be healthy though, and I find it's a really great way to eat all those vegetables like shungiku, komatsuna and so on.

[nakji]

I want to get kitted out for the upcoming nabe season. I've already looked around at tabletop burners, and I'll probably get a cheapy Iwatani. What else do I need? Is a terracotta donabe necessary? Desirable? Do I need any other accessories? (I love accessories).

[torakris]

For me the only must would be a donabe! You can do almost anything in this from the regular nabe dishes to Korean chige to rice dishes to fondue. The only thing I don't make in the donabe is sukiyaki though shabu shabu works fine. I used to have a sukiyaki pot but it became too small for my family and now I use a regular high sided (about 3 inches) fry pan and it works so well I have no intention of buying a special one.

Any of the accessories, special spoons, dishes etc are personal preference, I am not an accessory person so I just use whatever is already in my kitchen.

[JasonTrue]

I can't say I've seen terra cotta donabe very much in Japan; they're almost all Iga-style flameware, with some occasional use of simple metal ones, and a few restaurants pull off some tricks with a wicker-like basket and an induction plate inside of a special paper, but usually only for simple nabe.

(As a disclaimer, on occasion I sell Kotobuki trading donabe through my web site).

[nakji]

I can't say I've seen terra cotta donabe very much in Japan; they're almost all Iga-style flameware, with some occasional use of simple metal ones, and a few restaurants pull off some tricks with a wicker-like basket and an induction plate inside of a special paper, but usually only for simple nabe.

I think I just typed terracotta because I read it somewhere in this topic. I guess I meant ceramic (versus a metal frypan).

What's Iga-style flameware?

Is it worth my while buying a dedicated donabe, or would an investment in a cheapish deep frying pan be just as good, do you think?

[JasonTrue]

You can always start with a deep frying pan. The advantage of the donabe is its heat retention. There are actually nabemono for which that is not an advantage, and also pragmatic people who realize that rounded metal nabe are inexpensive and more durable.

Iga is just a location. I believe it's actually the old name for part of Mie prefecture.

Flameware just means pottery which has materials and a firing temperature suitable for cooking on a flame or direct heat source. Pottery which is not designed for this purpose is more prone to cracking, but even flameware can crack if there is an internal defect or a temperature shock. I've had one very nice pot that Hiromi picked in Japan die a premature death, unfortunately, with a hairline crack that leaks.

In the metal nabe category, there are two styles, including thin metal and cast-iron. Thin metal is often used in restaurants and ryokan for serving at the table, because it heats quickly, though heat retention is bad. Cast iron has similar heat retention to clay pots, but has somewhat fallen out of favor.

I've actually been served yudoufu in a hinoki-based box, which was, I presume, using an induction heat source. So there's plenty of variation in how to serve nabe. It's a simple food; no need to fall for any particular brand of snobbery, but there will be differences in how each type of pot retains heat, and how well it holds in heat with the lid.

I use a donabe, but it's partially for presentation reasons. For certain categories of dishes, such as takikomi gohan, I think donabe are better than the thin metal nabe designs because the flameware pots retain heat better and hold steam better.

Before I had a nabe, I used a small saucepan. If you have some Le Creuset-style pots, they would work, as well; they just won't look very Japanese.

[Hiroyuki]

Images of Iga donabe

Unfortunately, I don't have a donabe. I wish I could get one, but my family is not a nabe-liking one. I use a big, flat-bottom, metal pot, which serves the purpose fine.

[SheenaGreena]

don't know if you have to do this in Japan or not, but my sister just recently purchased a iga "style" donabe for her new apartment. The instructions say that you have to soak the pot in water for 2 days or it'll start leaking during cooking. Maybe the pot she bought was cheap, but just a heads up.

wouldn't want you cooking something tasty and time consuming to have to leak all over your table ):

[Hiroyuki]

Any donabe is prone to leaking because it is porous.

I didn't know of the soaking method. A common practice is to put some cooked rice (say, a rice bowl of cooked rice), add water, keep simmering for hours, and leave the nabe overnight to fill the gaps.

[SheenaGreena]

Yep one of the methods was to just fill it up with water and then let it soak for 2 days. Did it, and it worked just fine

Never heard of adding cooked rice and simmering....sounds like it would leak that way? I just left it in the sink as it was soaking in case of leakage

[Hiroyuki]

The idea is that the starch in the rice fills the pores of the donabe.