Shabu Shabu Sharon Style

You can use premade dashi, but my cookbook (Japanese Hot Pots by Tadashi Ono) doesn’t recommend it for health and taste issues.

Dashi:
8c. water. 2 - 6 inch pieces of kombu seaweed. Soak for 30 min. Bring to a boil on med. When it starts to boil, remove and discard the kombu. Add 2T water and 1 packet or up to 3 c. dried dancing fish (yea, Dani!)(shaved bonito). Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 5 min. Strain. Throw fish bits out. I split the result in half, about 3 cups each, and used one. Refrigerate the other and use soon.

Hot Pot: (Judy uses a Fry Daddy, but a crock pot won’t work because the heat is too low). I bought my hot pot at amazon.com. 4 ½ qt.

3 c. Dashi from above
1 c. water
1 packet (4g.) dashi stock mix (the packets I bought are entirely in Japanese, so that’s all I can tell)
1/3 c. soy sauce (mine is reduced sodium)
¼ c. light brown miso
½ c. mirin
(the recipe called for 1 c. sake, which I didn’t have)
Mix these well, especially to break up the miso.

Bring the pot to a vigorous boil and add your food. Don’t overfill and bring the temp. down. Keep adding foods as needed. Alter the temp. also if it boils too much or too little.

We used:
Broccoli, cauliflower, tofu, carrots, yams, mushrooms, napa cabbage, chicken breast. Cut everything into manageable bite size pieces.

For dipping:
Peanut sauce, sesame dipping sauce (I’m allergic to peanuts so this is a miracle for me), soy sauce, ponzu sauce (I didn’t see much difference from soy sauce, furikaku sprinkles, sweet and sour sauce, and anything you can think might be good.

Alex even used some ketchup and mustard with his sweet and sour sauce.

When you are done with the cooking, use the last of the now flavored liquid to cook noodles to finish the meal. We used buckwheat soba. Udon would also be good. Or you could serve rice in a separate bowl to mix in with servings. For more info on serving shabu shabu, try youtube. My method blends both Chinese hot pot cooking with the Japanese shabu shabu.

Tasty and healthy! A winner.