Japanese · Dinner

Sukiyaki

A hot pot cooked at the table: thin beef seared in a heavy iron pan, then simmered in a sweet soy warishita with tofu, mushrooms and chrysanthemum greens, each mouthful dipped in raw beaten egg before it is eaten.

40 min total Serves 4 servings Easy
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Sukiyaki

Photograph credit: Sukiyaki hot pot, Japanese food · CC0 1.0 · Rawpixel

What Goes With It

  • Warm sake or a cold Japanese lager
  • Steamed short-grain rice
  • Pickles to cut the sweetness

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Nasu Dengaku.

Sukiyaki, in preparation
Sukiyaki, in preparation

Photograph credit: Sukiyaki hot pot, Japanese food · CC0 1.0 · Rawpixel

How to Make Sukiyaki

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  1. Combine the warishita ingredients in a pan, bring to a simmer for 2 minutes to cook off the alcohol, and set aside.

  2. Arrange all the vegetables, tofu, noodles and beef on platters and bring everything to the table with a portable burner.

  3. Heat a heavy cast-iron pan and rub it with the suet until the base is slicked with fat.

  4. Lay in four or five slices of beef, sprinkle with a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of soy, and sear 30 seconds a side. Eat this first round straight away — it is the cook's reward.

  5. Pour in enough warishita to come 2 cm up the pan and bring to a simmer.

  6. Add the tofu, shirataki, mushrooms, leek and cabbage in neat sections, keeping the shirataki away from the beef, and simmer 6 to 8 minutes.

  7. Add the greens and more beef in batches as you eat, topping up with warishita and a splash of dashi as it reduces.

  8. Each person beats an egg in a small bowl and dips the hot beef and vegetables into it before eating, with rice alongside.

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A Few Notes

Ask a butcher to slice the beef on a machine, or freeze it for 40 minutes and slice it yourself as thinly as you can manage.

Keep the shirataki noodles physically separated from the beef in the pan — a compound in them toughens meat on contact.

Use pasteurised eggs if raw egg is a concern, or skip the dip and let the beef cool briefly instead.

Storing and Reheating

Leftovers keep 2 days refrigerated and make an excellent donburi over rice with a fresh egg cracked in.

The Numbers per Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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Compiled by Turab

Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.

First published ; last changed .