Ultimate Homemade Sukiyaki Guide (Japanese Recipe From Scratch) | Sudachi

Sukiyaki isn't your everyday dish, its rich flavours and premium ingredients make it special. Despite being a luxury dish, it's surprisingly easy to make and I'm going to show you how. You can also find this recipe on my website along with over 400 other Japanese recipes, just google sukiyaki space stachi to find me. First, let's make sukiyaki sauce, what's known as warishita. Grab a saucepan and add 3 tablespoons of mirin and 3 tablespoons of sake. Boil it over medium heat for 1 or 2 minutes. Then reduce the heat to medium low and add 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of light brown sugar and 3 tablespoons of water. Mix it over low heat until its sugar has dissolved. Then pour it into a heatproof container and add 5 grams of kombu for some umami. I'm going to leave that to soak for about 30 minutes. While you wait, prepare your ingredients. For the vegetables, I have 75 grams of crown daisy, known in Japanese as shungiku, 60 grams of enoki mushrooms, 2 napa cabbage leaves, 200 grams of grilled firm tofu, 4 shiitake mushrooms and half a carrot cut into decorative flowers. I have also cut one Japanese leek, we call negi. Usually I diagonally slice it like you can see on the right side, but this time I've also cut a couple of cylinders to show you how to eat sukiyaki in a different style. Finally, I've got about 300 grams of thinly sliced wagyu beef. Don't feel like you need wagyu beef to make sukiyaki though. Regular thinly sliced beef works great and some people make it with pork belly or even chicken. If you're going with beef, try thinly sliced rib eye roll, chakai roll, plate or round. I've got more information about the different parts used for sukiyaki on my blog. The link is in the description. Once your sauce is ready, start heating your pot on medium. I'm using a cast iron sukiyaki pot. I'm going to thoroughly grease the surface with beef suet. These cubes of beef suet are actually free in supermarkets in Japan. You can find them next to the sukiyaki beef because they're used for this purpose. If you can't get it, beef tallow or lard are good substitutes. Once it's well coated, add your Japanese leeks and turn them occasionally to get a nice char all over. I'm also going to add a halved shiitake mushroom so I can show you how to eat sukiyaki in Kansai style. If you're making my recipe, we take the leeks out and add them back in later. I'm making both today so I'll save these diagonally cut ones for later. After the mushrooms and leeks are cooked through and charred, lay down a few slices of meat and give them a light grill. I'm using this thinly sliced Japanese beef from Miyazaki prefecture for sukiyaki today. At my regular butcher's shop, they had some pieces with oxidised surfaces and discolouration so they offered to drop the price from around 4,500 yen to just 1,500 yen. That's about 10 dollars. Think about it, 300 grams of wagyu beef for 10 dollars. No way I'd turn it down. When the meat is ready, drizzle about a tablespoon of warishita sauce over it and enjoy it right away. Sukiyaki originated in Kyoto but in modern days, the cooking style varies significantly between western and eastern Japan. Since the butcher gave me extra beef, I thought I'd try demonstrating it western style before going into my recipe. While it's a simplified version, this is more or less the way it's eaten in western Japan. By eating it this way first, you get an added bonus. All that marbled fat seasoned the pan and adds an even richer and deeper flavour. Okay, let's move on to my recipe. So I'm going to take out the leftover beef suet and pour the warishita sauce into the pot. At this point, remove the kombu and throw it away. Next, I'm adding my vegetables and tofu and I'm going to let them cook in the sauce. The beauty of sukiyaki is that every household has their own way of making it. There's really no single right way now. My recipe actually sits somewhere between western and eastern styles, not strictly following either tradition. You could say I've cherry picked the best elements from both. Funnily enough, that makes sense given I was born in Aichi prefecture, right between Osaka and Tokyo. My goal was to create a sukiyaki recipe that holds true to those flavours but makes the cooking process simpler. While I've streamlined the preparation, I made sure to keep all the rich savoury depth that makes sukiyaki so special. Next, make some space in the pot and place the beef into the sauce. When you think of wagyu beef, you might picture steak. But for us Japanese, premium wagyu immediately makes us think of sukiyaki. That's really what we consider the ultimate luxury when it comes to wagyu. Next, we add in the crown daisy and from here, you can basically start eating at any time. Just help yourself to each ingredient as it's cooked to your liking. Now, you don't have to do this, but the proper way Japanese people eat sukiyaki is with a raw egg. Simply crack it into a bowl and whisk it thoroughly, then dip the cooked ingredients. It just works so well with the sauce. In Japan, eggs are safe to eat raw but if you're in another country, make sure to use pasteurised eggs if you want to do this too. When we make sukiyaki, we basically keep plates of raw ingredients nearby and top up every time it becomes depleted. We're essentially eating and cooking at the same time. This dish is great for parties because you don't need to be in the kitchen. You can just have a portable stove in the middle of your dining table. That's why you often find it at onenkai, those end-of-year parties where everyone gets together and draw in New Year's celebrations. If the sauce is getting a little low, you can top it up with a bit of water. But if you're cooking a lot of ingredients, it's a good idea to make extra sauce and top it up so it doesn't become too watered down. When I was young, I couldn't understand why anyone would cook beef like this. I thought, just grill it like yakiniku. But as I grew older, I realised what makes sukiyaki so special and now I totally get it. Anyway, once your ingredients are all used up, hopefully you have a bit of leftover sauce in the bottom of the pot. This sauce has been collecting flavour from the meat and vegetables and we definitely don't want to waste it. I'm going to top it up with a little bit of water and add some cooked udon noodles. This is the final step to enjoying sukiyaki to the full. You could also try it with shirataki noodles or konnyaku noodles. Anyway, I think I've covered everything. Thank you everyone who voted to see this recipe and thank you for watching. If you want to see the written version, I've put the link to the recipe on the screen. And if you love this video, don't miss my beef playlist popping up on your screen right now. Hope to see you in the next video. Take care.