Sukiyaki

Sukiyaki ( _ja. 鋤焼 or more commonly _ja. すき焼き; _ja. スキヤキ) is a Japanese dish in the "nabemono" (Japanese steamboat) style.

It consists of meat (usually thinly sliced beef), or a vegetarian version made only with firm tofu, slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and "mirin". Before being eaten, the ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of raw, beaten eggs.

Generally sukiyaki is a single dish for the colder days of the year and it is commonly found at "bōnenkai", Japanese year-end parties. A common theme in Japanese comedy is that one can make passable sukiyaki even on a very tight budget.

Ingredients

Thinly sliced beef is usually used for sukiyaki; although in the past, in certain parts of the country (notably Hokkaidō and Niigata), pork was also popular.

Popular ingredients cooked with the beef are:
* Tofu (usually seared firm tofu)
* "Negi" (a type of scallion)
* Leafy vegetables, such as Chinese cabbage and shungiku (Garland chrysanthemum leaves)
* Mushrooms such as shiitake and enokitake
* Jelly-noodles made out of konnyaku corm such as ito konnyaku or shirataki noodles. It is advisable to place these away from the beef because the calcium contained in the noodles can toughen meat.

Boiled wheat udon or soba (buckwheat) noodles are sometimes added, usually at the end to soak up the broth.

Preparation

Like other "nabemono" dishes, each Japanese region has a preferred way of cooking sukiyaki. The key difference is between the Kansai region in western Japan and the Kantō region in eastern Japan. In the Kantō (Tokyo) region, the ingredients are stewed in a prepared mixture of soy sauce, sugar, sake and "mirin", whereas in Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto region), the meat is first grilled in the pan greased with tallow. After other ingredients are put over these, the liquid is poured into the pan. The shungiku are added when all the ingredients are simmering. A raw egg has been broken into a bowl, one egg for each person. Some prefer to add a bit of soy sauce and the bowl is lightly beaten. The meat and vegetables are dipped into this sauce before you eat them.

History

Some anecdotes are known for the early history of sukiyaki. One is about a medieval nobleman. He stopped at a peasant's hut after a hunt and ordered him to cook the game. The peasant realized that his cooking utensils were improper for the noble, so he cleaned up his plow blade ("suki" in Japanese) and broiled ("yaki") the meat on it. Another story is about the Portuguese in the sixteenth century in Japan, where beef was not common food. They eagerly ate animals everywhere, even on "suki".Fact|date=March 2008

In the 1890s when Japan was opened to foreigners, new cooking styles also introduced. Cows, milk, meat, and egg became widely used, and sukiyaki was the most popular way to serve them. The first sukiyaki restaurant, "Isekuma", opened in Yokohama in 1862.

Beef is the primary ingredient in today's sukiyaki. There were two main ways of cooking sukiyaki: a Kantō (Tokyo area) and a Kansai (Osaka area) style. In the Kantō way, the special cooking sauce's ingredients are already mixed. In the Kansai way, the sauce is mixed at the time of eating. But after the great Kanto earthquake of 1923, the people of Kantō, temporarily moved to the Osaka area. While the people of Kantō were in Osaka, they got accustomed to the Kansai style of sukiyaki, and when they returned to Kantō, they introduced the Kansai sukiyaki style, where it has since become popular.

ukiyaki outside of Japan

Sukiyaki has become very popular outside Japan and many people consider it an elegant dish world-wide.Many restaurants around the world carry sukiyaki, with their own variations.

Thai sukiyaki

In Thailand, the term "sukiyaki", or simply "suki" refers to Thai Sukiyaki, a steamboat dish where diners dip meat, seafood, noodles, dumplings and vegetables into a pot of broth cooking at the table and dip it into a spicy "sukiyaki sauce" before eating. The dish only barely resembles Japanese sukiyaki, having a lot more in common with shabu shabu and Chinese hot pot.

Thai sukiyaki evolved from Chinese hot pot served in restaurants catering to members of Thailand's sizeable ethnic Chinese clientele, in which an aluminum pot was heated on a charcoal fire at the table and the raw ingredients presented on one big plate.

In the 1960s a restaurant chain called Coca opened its first branch in Siam Square, Bangkok, offering a modified version of the Chinese hot pot under the Japanese name of Sukiyaki. (Although it only vaguely resembled Japanese sukiyaki, it was a catchy name for it because of a Japanese pop song called "Sukiyaki" which was a big worldwide hit at the time.) This modified Thai version proved to be a massive hit, and it wasn't long before other chains started opening "suki" restaurants across Bangkok and other cities, each with its own special dipping sauce as the selling point.

In Thai sukiyaki, diners had more options of ingredients to choose from, each portion being considerably smaller in order to enable diners to order many more varieties. The spicy dipping sauce was catered for Thai tastes too, with a lot of chili sauce, chili, lime and coriander leaves added. The raw ingredients are presented on small plates and are cooked at the table in a gas- or electrically-heated stainless steel pot containing broth. Usually, an egg is added to the broth at the start of the meal.

Today the MK Restaurant chain is the most popular in Thailand with around 200 restaurants across the country and 20 in Japan. Coca is making a rapid spread abroad too, already serving Thai suki in 24 outlets across Asia and Australia and further outlets planned in the US and Europe. Coca's strategy abroad is focusing on the high-income customers. Other popular chains include Texas and Lailai.

References

*"A taste of Japan", Donald Richie, Kodansha, 2001 ISBN 4770017073

External links

* [http://japanesefood.about.com/library/weekly/aa053100a.htm Kantō-style sukiyaki recipe]
* [http://www.shimizu.or.jp/kitamura/ryouri.html More on the history of Sukiyaki]