Hot pot & soups ── Nabe (hot pot)
Sukiyaki (Kansai-fu)
Sukiyaki, Kansai style — beef grilled in the pot, then seasoned with sugar and soy sauce
Sukiyaki in which beef is grilled in a pan greased with beef fat and seasoned by sprinkling sugar and soy sauce straight on it. It is said to descend from sukiyaki, grilling fish or meat on a plow blade, and unlike the Kanto style that simmers, this one grills first and simmers after.
- Origin: Osaka City, Osaka
- Sukiyaki-style (simmered in warishita)
- About 400 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Beef fat is worked around an iron pan, and the sliced beef is spread out to sear. Once the meat has taken heat, sugar is sprinkled on and soy sauce poured straight over it, sending up a sweet, toasty aroma. After the beef is eaten, long onion, grilled tofu, and shirataki go in, and are pan-simmered in the vegetables' own moisture and the seasoning left behind. With no warishita, the beef's fat and the sweet-salty seasoning reach the tongue directly.
How it's made
The pan is heated, beef fat is spread across it, and only the beef goes in; when it is roughly seven- or eight-tenths done, sugar and soy sauce are added. Pieces come out to be dipped in egg, then vegetables go in, the lid goes on, and the moisture they release does the simmering. Because seasoning is decided in the pan each time, the sugar and soy sauce are adjusted as the cooking goes. Warishita is not the norm here.
Why it took this shape
In the Kansai region, fish and meat are said to have been grilled on the blade of a field plow since long ago, and a dish called uosuki, grilled fish, is thought to have been known early. The Kansai style is explained as that grilling carried over to beef. Osaka sources describe the sugar-and-soy way as the taste of home, which suggests a place where grilling beef had taken root.
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
- Toriniku no SukiyakiA whole chicken, offal included, is piled onto a platter with napa cabbage and chrysanthemum greens and simmered in a bold sugar-and-soy broth — a gathering-day hot pot from the Kasuya-to-Munakata area, where poultry-raising is said to have taken off after an Edo-era famine.
- Gyu NabeA Yokohama-born hot pot of beef, tofu and chrysanthemum greens simmered from the start in a soy or miso-based sauce. Born of the port city's encounter with Western meat-eating culture, it is said to trace to a tavern owner who opened one of the first beef-pot restaurants.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Osaka
- AkanekoSteamed sticky rice pounded with wheat flour is dusted with sugar and soybean flour — also called hangesho mochi, for the rite marking the end of rice planting. The whole-ground wheat flour once left the mochi brownish, said to resemble a cat's round back and give the dish its name.
- BatteraThin slices of vinegared mackerel and white kelp sheet are pressed together in a wooden mold. A sushi shop in Minami-Senba is said to have devised it in 1891, naming it after the Portuguese word for a small boat because the original version, made with konoshiro, resembled one.
- Beni Shoga TenThin slices of red ginger, pickled in plum vinegar, are battered and deep-fried. The plum vinegar's tang and the ginger's bite are said to suit drinks well, and the fritter appears as a one-sen tempura in Sakunosuke Oda's 1940 novella 'Meoto Zenzai,' evidence of how long it has fed ordinary Osakans.
- Beni-zuiki to Aburaage no TaitanBeni-zuiki, reddish taro leaf-stalks that can grow to 2 meters tall, is soaked in vinegared water to remove its bitterness, then simmered with fried tofu in dashi and soy sauce — a summer obanzai dish. Its spongy cross-section is said to soak up flavor well, and it has been named a Naniwa specialty product.
- Dote YakiParboiled beef tendon simmers for a long time against a bank of miso and mirin piled around the pan's edge like a levee, or dote. Rich and sweet-savory, it pairs well with drinks and is said to be a beloved downtown Osaka food, with many shops concentrated in the Shinsekai district.
- EhomakiA thick sushi roll eaten whole and in silence while facing the year's auspicious direction on Setsubun, the last day of winter. Its origin is not settled, but theories passed down include a game among the geisha quarters and a prayer for prosperity by Osaka's Semba merchant houses.