Hot pot & soups ── Nabe (hot pot)
Kaki no Dotenabe
Kaki no dotenabe — oyster hot pot with a miso levee around the rim
Red and white miso are spread like an embankment around the rim of a clay pot, to be crumbled in bit by bit as the broth simmers with plump Hiroshima Bay oysters. Calm currents and river nutrients flowing into the bay are said to give the oysters their size and depth of flavor.
- Origin: Hiroshima
- Miso-based
- About 680 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A hotpot with miso smeared around the rim of the pot like an embankment (dote), into which oysters, tofu, and vegetables are simmered. Diners crumble the miso in bit by bit to adjust the broth's richness as they eat. Hiroshima's oysters are known for their large, richly flavored meat, and the broth carries that richness together with the miso's toasty depth — a dish built for winter.
How it's made
White and red miso are mixed with sake, mirin, and sugar and spread around the inner rim of a clay pot. The base is lined with napa cabbage core to prevent scorching, then scallion, napa cabbage, shiitake, enoki, konjac noodles, carrot, and tofu go in, with the oysters added last. Broth is poured in and heated, and diners crumble in the rim miso to taste as they go.
Why it took this shape
Accounts of the name vary — some say it comes from smearing miso like a dote embankment, or from the dish's supposed inventor, or from oyster boats that once served the stew along a riverside embankment in the Edo period. Hiroshima Bay is said to offer ideal conditions for oyster growth — calm but steadily moving water and a layer of diluted salinity from river inflow — and the dish grew up alongside the bay's long-running oyster farming as a winter staple.
Before you go
- Foods to look for in winterA guide to foods often seen in Japan around winter — nabe hot pot, fugu, oysters, crab, year-end soba, and osechi — with rough pointers for finding them.
- At yakiniku, shabu-shabu, and hot potGrilling your own meat at yakiniku, swishing thin slices at shabu-shabu, and sharing from the pot — the customs behind each.
Dishes in the same style
- Ankou-nabeMonkfish meat, skin, liver, and stomach simmered with vegetables, a winter pot of northern Ibaraki. It is described as a more approachable version of dobujiru, which fishermen ate aboard their boats, and comes in miso and soy-sauce versions.
- Beka NabeSardines pickled in rice bran are simmered with napa cabbage, mushrooms, and sake lees in this Noto winter hot pot, said to descend from a preservation method from before refrigeration — its name reputedly a nod to how commonly the cheap fish was eaten.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Hiroshima
- Anago MeshiConger eel, grilled kabayaki-style, is sliced and layered over rice cooked in dashi—a dish from Miyajima. It uses "Seto anago," prized for the fat that fast currents help build into the fish, and is said to have begun in 1901 as a bento sold at Miyajimaguchi station.
- AzumaSardine-like mamakari, cured in vinegar, is pressed onto seasoned okara instead of vinegared rice in this coastal sushi. It is said to have begun as a way to stretch scarce rice by substituting the cheap, plentiful soy pulp, and was served at festivals and New Year's gatherings.
- EbamakiRice is tossed with Hiroshima-na pickle, bonito flakes, and sesame, then rolled in toasted nori—a roll from Hiroshima's Eba district, long known for seaweed cultivation. The ends are sometimes tucked shut so it can be eaten one-handed while rowing, a food born for nori fishermen working on the water.
- Fuchu-yakiA Fuchu, Hiroshima take on okonomiyaki that swaps sliced pork belly for ground beef or pork worked right into the batter, so the meat's flavor is said to come through evenly in every bite.
- GansuFish paste coated in panko and fried, a Kure, Hiroshima specialty. Said to have been devised in the postwar 1940s as a way to use leftover fish paste from kamaboko production, an unusual pairing of fried fish cake and cutlet-style crumb.