Nabemono: Comfort food during the cold weather

During these freezing cold weather, there is nothing easier to prepare than a hot stew or soup to keep your body warm. Nabe is a Japanese style of “one pot cooking” that a family share with a sumptuous warm and healthy meal. Nabe-ryori are meals cooked in the pot filled with broth and flavorings and being cooked slowly while different ingredients are being added. Nowadays, every Japanese home kept their nabemono hot at the dining table using portable stoves. One large pot is used, with everyone at the table sharing it.

Sukiyaki is a common Japanese dish served in the nabemono style and Shabu-shabu is also most popular and common hot pot dish all over Japan consist of thinly sliced meat and vegetables boiled in water.

Varieties of Nabe

Chanko Nabe

Chanko is a generic term for any dish cooked solely for sumo wrestlers, more popularly known as sumo wrestler stew. This is prepared with more ingredients than the usual in order for these wrestlers to gain weight. The normal ingredients that you will find in this chankonabe are chicken with skin, fish-friend and made into fishballs, tofu, or sometimes beef, and vegetables like daikon, bok choy and Chinese cabbage.

Botan Nabe

Botan nabe is a rare dish in Japan commonly prepared in the mountainous areas wherein wild boars are used as the main ingredient. The meat is full of nutrients that in the mountain regions it’s called yamakujira. The characteristic of Botan nabe is that you enjoy both the savory lean meat and the milder fatty meat that goes well with the special miso soup made using boar bones.

Motsunabe

A popular stew made with portions of beef and pork tripes. When it is cooked, it is filled with soup, cabbage and garlic chives are added. The base soup is usually soy sauce with garlic and chili pepper or miso. Champon noodles are often used to complete the dish into the pot and boiled to complete the dish. The offal used in motsunabe is mostly beef intestines, but other kinds of offal can also be used.

Ishikari Nabe

Ishikari nabe is a local hot pot dish named after the Ishikari River, the longest river in Hokkaido. This dish is served in a cast iron pot with miso as based broth and winter vegetables, salmon and tofu. It was originally a simple fisherman’s stew often cooked on the beach after catching salmon at the mouth of the Ishikari River.

Kamo Nabe

A hot pot dish where duck meat is the main ingredient. The duck meat slowly simmered with a chili pepper, then veggies are added in order, to allow them to cook the right time.

Sakura Nabe

A kind of stew that uses horse meat and not regular beef. In Nagano, where people are known for consuming horse meat than beef in their diet, when they reach the age of 50 and above, they eat sukiyaki, and when you mean eating sukiyaki, they consume horse meat and not beef because horse meat is rich in linoleic acid that helps reduce cholesterol that can lead to stroke.

Kiritanpo Nabe

A stew or soup where the basic ingredients are rice sticks, salt, pepper, dashi, carrot, burdock and soy sauce. This dish originated in Akita Prefecture where cooked rice are pounded until mashed then formed into cylinders or tube-like folded around Japanese cedar skewers then toasted over an open hearth or grill.

Kaki Nabe

A kind of stew made of oyster and mushroom. Hirosohima prefecture is a place famous for seafood products and one of leading producers of oyster. During winter time, they make one of the best kaki nabe. It is made of rich and fresh juicy oyster simmered with broiled tofu and oter vegetables with sweet miso.

Motsunabe

This dish has originated in Fukuoka-ken. A popular stew made with portions of beef and pork tripes. When it is cooked, it is filled with soup, cabbage and garlic chives are added. The base soup is usually soy sauce with garlic and chili pepper, or miso. Champon noodles are often used to complete the dish into the pot and boiled to complete the dish. Motsunabe is mostly beef intestines.