Sukiyaki: how to coock and to serve

• 09/07/2008 - 00:00
• Author: Yuki Sakuma
• Japanese Cooking
• 0 Comments
• Read in IT

Ciao! This evening we went to a Japanese restaurant to eat some sukiyaki. Sukiyaki is a dish loved by the Japanese and is a community meal: all the members of the family participate actively in the making of it.

    

Lets's start from the beginning of the preparation for this delightful dish. First thing, pour the sauce made from mirin and soy sauce into the pan and heat it well. In the meantime the waitress should arrange a bowl for each fellow diner along with an egg to whisk with the chopstick on the table. We'll make use of the egg later.

When the sauce is hot, we can start to cook the ingredients: first put some vegetables, which need morte time to be cooked, then some pieces of tofu and meat which are faster. When well cooked, the tofu is very soft. If you are not experienced with chopsticks it's probably better to use the ladle to pick it and put it in your plate. Below you can see some photos with the first ingredients used in the course of creating this lovely dish.

As you can see the meat is almost cooked, though the vegetables are still in the going at it. For this reason it is better, as I mentioned, to put these in first, then the meat. When everything is ready we can start to serve what we like most; each of us had his plate and his bowl with the whisked egg for the last part of the process.

The last thing to do before enjoying this excellent plate is to dip the meat or the tofu in the whisked egg. For a westerner this may seem a little strange, but it gives the meat a real special flavour that's impossible to describe. Besides, the egg cools down the heat of the meal which is exceptionally hot when it's picked it out of the pan! It's what that whole "cooking" thing does.

Aren't we forgetting something? The noodles, surely! For the sake of simplicity we cooked the noodles once we ran out of the other ingredients. This is also done to flavour them better. Indeed, the noodles absorb a lot of sauce, so if we cook them before the other ingredients we risk ending up with a dryed pan. Still, it's just a question of preference, if you like you can cook them with all the other ingredients.

The noodles, too, can be dipped into the egg before eating them. One last bit of advice: during the cooking it is better to divide the pan in two side; reserve one side for the ingredients just added, the other for the ones nearly cooked. In this way, you don't risk eating anything raw, like the example below.

Once you've taste this dish you can't live without it. Being a dish to be prepared with friends, it's a nice experience to try with your buddies. One last thing (this time  I mean it) it's better to take turns putting the ingredients in the pan, or the "cook" risks ending up with nothing! I hope I've made you eager to taste this superb dish of the Japanese cuisine. Just writing this article I got hungry! :) This sukiyaki is sufficient for 4 people, and at the end of our meal we where really stuffed, but then again, we eat also some sushi!

See you soon!
.::Yuki_Sakuma::.