RECIPE: Japanese Mille-Feuille Nabe (Thousand Leaves Hot Pot) (2024)

FAQs

What is in a traditional Japanese hot pot? ›

Yose-nabe is the most common and basic hot pot dish, served at homes across Japan. Vegetables, mushrooms, meat and seafood are cooked in a pot of flavorful broth. The broth typically contains water, sake, soy sauce, mirin and dashi soup stock.

The concept of nabe is simple: it involves a mixture of fresh vegetables, meat, seafood, tofu, soybean products, or seasonal ingredients, all cooked in a simmering soup broth in a pot. Some of the popular nabe dishes include Sukiyaki, Shabu Shabu, Yudofu, and Oden — many of which I've shared on Just One Cookbook.

Hot pot is considered a main course and is usually served without rice or noodles on the side. Hot pots can be prepared and eaten at home or in a restaurant. Typical hot pot ingredients include thinly sliced meat, leaf vegetables, mushrooms, vermicelli, sliced potatoes, bean products, egg dumplings, tofu, and seafood.

Oden (pictured above) is made by simmering Daikon radish, Chikuwa(tubal-shaped fish cakes), and other items in a soy sauce-based broth; Kimchi Nabe is seasoned with kimchi, a spicy Korean pickle; Motsu-Nabe is featuring pork intestines called Motsu; Yu-dofu(Hot Tofu) is made with a simple Kombu broth.

“Nabe” is short for “nabemono,” which is a catch-all term for any Japanese hot pot dish. Hot pot is a communal meal similar to fondue in the West — everyone sits around the table and takes piping hot food straight from the pot. It's a great way to warm up during the cold winter months.

There is another dish similar to nabe called shabu-shabu. However, the star of shabu-shabu is the meat. It is very thinly sliced and placed in the boiling broth for a short time until cooked and then can be dipped in various sauces before eating. With nabe, everything is cooked together in one pot at the same time.

Yose Nabe

There are no specific rules regarding the seasonings and the ingredients you can use, so every region and household has its own unique recipe. Most people make a dashi with ingredients like kombu, then add chicken, pork, or mushrooms to deepen the flavor of the soup.

The star of the dish is the Hokkaido specialty, namazake (raw salmon). The dish is made by placing the namazake, cut into chunks - bone and all - into the kombu-based broth, along with tofu, green onions, spinach, cabbage, onion, and other ingredients, then seasoning with miso.

Traditional Chinese hot pot generally comes already loaded with meat, seafood, and vegetables, but with shabu shabu you'll be given plates of meat, vegetables and other items (dumplings and udon, for example) to cook in the broth.

Hot Pot Ingredient List. Hearty and leafy, look for greens that retain texture after cooking like bok choy, watercress, snow pea leaves, Napa cabbage, Chinese spinach, gai lan and green onions. Look for daikon, carrots, small potatoes and either cut into cubes or thinly sliced.

What is the difference between Chinese and Japanese hot pot? ›

Chinese hot pot will always be paired with thinly sliced steak and pork; Japanese style is tasty with Wagyu beef; Thai broths almost always feature a variety of seafood like fish balls, mussels, and squid. Vegetables across all three styles are not limited to bok choy, mushrooms and napa cabbage.

Shabu-shabu (Japanese: しゃぶしゃぶ, romanized: shabushabu) is a Japanese nabemono hotpot dish of thinly sliced meat and vegetables boiled in water and served with dipping sauces. The term is onomatopoeic, derived from the sound – "swish swish" – emitted when the ingredients are stirred in the cooking pot.

This dish is known as “oden”, and is a type of a nabemono (hot pot), made of various ingredients cooked in a broth of dashi, soy sauce, sake and mirin.

Donabe (doh-NAH-bay) is Japanese traditional earth cookware. The Kanji characters that make up the word mean “clay pot”: do is “clay” or “earth” and nabe is “pot”. Donabe-ware is versatile: you can use it for a hot pot, soup, stew, for steaming fish or vegetables, making rice, or even grilling!

The main difference between shabu shabu and other types of Japanese hot pot is that rather than simmering all of the ingredients together before serving, shabu shabu is cooked bite-by-bite over the course of the meal, similar to fondue.

Traditional Chinese hot pot generally comes already loaded with meat, seafood, and vegetables, but with shabu shabu you'll be given plates of meat, vegetables and other items (dumplings and udon, for example) to cook in the broth.

​​​​Hot pot can be healthy when you choose your ingredients, soup base and dipping sauces carefully. The Department of Endocrinology at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) explains. “Let's have steamboat!” This is often a clarion call for some festive, heart-warming get-together with family, friends or colleagues.

The broth used to cook the dish is typically made from dashi, a Japanese stock made from kelp and bonito flakes, which is high in nutrients and has been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties. Not only is shabu shabu a nutritious choice, but it can also have other health benefits.