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Escape Winter with a Hotpot
I and my youngest daughter run a bit hot, so we like our cold winters more than the hot summers here in Japan. However, if you’re like my wife and oldest daughter, then you probably are wearing a couple layers of clothing right now, wrapped in your favorite fluffy blankie, eager to find some way to get heat inside your body faster.
We at Globalkitchen Japan have some good news. We’ve discovered that ingesting large quantities of boiled meats and vegetables in hot soup can immediately bring your core body temperature up. Our scientists assure us that anybody can escape winter’s icy clutches with that one cool life-hack.
Of course, you can make a classic chicken soup, but what if you want to stay warm like a Japanese country bumpkin (and we love our Japaneese country bumpkins, folks)? Then you need an inaka nabe.
What is an Inaka Nabe?
An inaka nabe, or “countryside pot” is typically a cast iron or aluminum pot used to make traditional Japanese hotpot soups. There are different varieties of inaka nabe, but typically they include two loop handles designs to allow the pot to be hung over an open fire. While these days we don’t sit around a fire pit in the middle of our house while we eat, we can still enjoy a nice hotpot at the dinner table!
Inaka nabe are designed for making hotpot dishes. If you are a new owner of an inaka nabe, you might be wondering just what to do with that hefty new friend of yours. To help get your relationship off on the right track, we’ve written a recipe for making a classic hotpot dish: miso nabe. Miso nabe is a delicious, light dish that is an easy introduction to Japanese hotpot cooking.
How to Make Miso Nabe
Ingredients (serves 3-4 people)
- Pork, thinly sliced, 600g (about 1.5 lb)
- Napa cabbage, 1/2 head
- Daikon radish, 1/2 piece
- Carrot, 1 piece
- Welsh onion (negi), 1 piece
- Enoki mushrooms, 2 bunches
- Shiitake mushrooms, 5 pieces
- Tofu, 1 block
- Miso, 100g (3.53 oz)
- Light soy sauce, 3 tablespoons
- Water, 1 liter (1.06 quarts)
Cut vegetables
Cut the vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Welsh onions are typically slice diagonally into 1-1.5cm pieces Remove shiitake stems. Cut stars into the shiitake tops to help speed up cooking, add umami to the soup, and for good looking nabe.
Cut tofu
Cut the block of tofu into bite-sized cubes.
Boil water, add soy sauce
Bring one liter of water to a boil. Add soy sauce.
Boil vegetables
Place the vegetables and tofu into the water, starting with tougher foods like the radish and carrots. Place the lid on the pot and let the vegetables boil to preferred tenderness.
Dissolve miso
Turn heat to low, then dissolve the miso. Miso can burn, so although it would be easier to dissolve before adding vegetables, we dissolve it now.
You can use any kind of miso. Check out our beginner’s guide to making miso to look more about miso and dissolving it.
Add meat and Serve
Now that the vegetables are cooked and the miso is dissolved, add the thinly sliced pork to the soup and let it cook.
Congratulations, you and your loved ones are now ready to eat hotpot like Japanese country boys and girls.
Check out more
If you like miso, you might be interested in learning about a useful tool for dissolving miso. If you would like some more hot food ideas perfect for winter, check out our recipe for [grandma’s battle-tested sukiyaki](https://www.globalkitchenjapan.com/blogs/articles/grandmas-battle-tested-sukiyaki-recipe), which uses the classic soy sauce/mirin/sake combo instead of miso for a richer flavor. You may also be interested in our guide to shabu-shabu, which is a more “active”, social dish that leans more heavily on meats than on vegetables.
