The Group Slurp
It’s a mystery, but nabemono has never really escaped these shores
I read today that China has the most Japanese restaurants outside of this country, with almost 80,000 shops. The U.S. and Korea are next.
So why when you go to these so-called Japanese establishments do they all have the same menu? Sushi, tempura, and sukiyaki…
Call me crazy, but I have long suspected there must be an ultra-secret agency within the Japanese government that selectively blocks export of certain Japanese cultural items.
Could be the island mentality thing.
Japan seems to be fine with outsiders romping all over taiko drumming, haiku, Zen rock gardens, Mt. Fuji, Godzilla, and sushi. But there are a raft of other deeply Japanese items—often amazing foods—that miraculously never escape these borders.
Take nabemono. This is a healthy, flavorful, bone-warming winter stew meant to be eaten in groups of shivering friends. It translates to “hot pot stuff,” and it’s served not only at every family table in the nation but also at casual pubs and restaurants. “Nabe” serves as the centerpiece of an often raucous meal.
Author’s note: my friend Randy in San Francisco says his city used to have a couple of Japanese shops that served nabemono but all have since been closed down. Oh no, my fellow Japanese cuisine aficionado. Has elite Japan determined that there is something too delicious, too revealing of self to share with the horde? I have my suspicions!
Admittedly, the dearth of nabe abroad might be more innocuous than Japan shadow banning the planet’s other 194 countries.
This is a communal dish that is meant to be wolfed among friends. While Asians are all about the Group Slurp, I can see westerners in particular balking at the idea of four or five pairs of spitty chopsticks exploring a shared pot of soup...
Hey, I’m a germaphobe too but I tell you, nabemono is worth a rethink of hygeine standards.
The dish typically arrives at your table as a shallow metal or ceramic pot with only clear, dashi-infused soup inside. (Most typically, the dashi would be extracted from konbu kelp and bonito flakes.)
The pot is placed on a gas burner in the center of the table. The aroma of the stripped-down soup alone is dare I say already perfect.
A large serving plate then arrives with “gu,” or the chunks that your nabemono will be cooking.
Let’s analyze this plate of gu. It’s important, because here you will find no less than the entire Japanese/Agro/Fishery Psyche. If the Irish are about meat and potatoes, this platter is the Japanese people themselves.
First, note the piles of bite-size wedges of (white, fluffy, unobtrusive) fish like sole, halibut, or snapper. You’ll likely also find fresh shrimp, scallops, and maybe clams and oysters—these will help deepen the flavor of the seafood-infused broth you’ll be making at your table (more later on this soup’s second act).
Of course, a generous array of winter veggies like cabbage, shungiku, leeks, burdock root, enoki, shiitake, carrots, and daikon radish will also be stuffed onto the plate. Hunks of raw or fried tofu, and if you’re lucky rice cakes that will melt into wonderous goo during the boil, would likely round out your stockpile.
Some nabemono, actually my favorite versions, are called yosenabe. “Yose” means assembling, or in the case of a bubbling hot pot, gathering everything together from the mountains as well as the ocean. It’s an even homier version of nabe than you’d find in most restaurants. Basically mama (face it, papa ain’t doing anything except barking for more beer) rifles the kitchen and tosses in the works. The starting broth of the Yose soup will not only be sea-inspired dashi but will also have bone stock in it, and your gu plate of ingredients will now also have chicken, pork, and mountain veggies thrown in together with the ocean bounty.
Chef’s kiss!
Let’s understand that the whole point of nabemono is to warm a group on a cold winter’s evening. The pot boils and steams in the center of the table, and using ladles and chopsticks, the diners hoist and pick ingredients out and place them into small individual soup bowls. Depending on the type of nabe you’re being served, you might zhuzh up your bowl with some Ponzu sauce, sanshou, or garlic paste that will then blend with the soup being ladled in.
The food is blazing. It’s funny, but I almost never see Japanese people blow on food they know is about to brand their tongues. They pop lava-hot chunks of tofu or daikon straight into their mouths and then huff and puff and gag and whooooooosh in and out in a panicked attempt to cool the food when it’s all way too late. Four layers of tongue and inner cheek later, it’s onto the next piece.
It’s a group nosh—beer and often warmed sake splash around liberally. Yelling and laughing and disrupting half the neighborhood is all part of nabemono fun!
By the time the pot is picked clean of every last ingredient, and only the dregs of a meat, seafood, and veggie-infused soup is left at the bottom, the restaurant asks if we’d like to “close” the meal. This is called shime.
Japanese take their carbs at the end of their meals, rather than say as a basket of 12 kinds of bread and butter before anything has arrived from the chef.
Yup I’m looking at you, New York.
Shime is the final addition of maybe udon noodles or possibly rice to the soup. You have now closed your hot pot meal with a final helping of gut-stuffing carbs!
No one leaves a nabe dinner with nothing less than a tight waistband and a face full of sweat. While the street waiting outside the restaurant may be frozen, your stagger back home will be jolly.
Toru is a gifted cook. I asked him if nabemono is tough to make and he laughed. He wants me to tell you it’s the dashi at the beginning that’s the key—everything else are ingredients that savor-ize the dish on their own. Just chunk ‘em in.
Winter is late, but it’s coming now for those of us in the northern hemisphere. Give it a try. Read up on dashi, start your pot out right, and together let’s bring nabemono out into the world.
(Whether Japan wants us to or not.)
It’s likely that it’s more of a mom and pop izakaya thing. I’m fortunate to have had a few over the years--and likely disappearing rapidly.
And yes just had it at home last night!
This sounds pretty similar to shabu-shabu, which is definitely around in Los Angeles (where there's rarely a need for a warning meal).
That said, I need to see if any friends have a single burner to put on the dining room table so we can do this obviously enjoyable activity. It's sounds fun! I've made dashi before and have seaweed in the pantry so that shouldn't present a problem.