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Sukiyaki & Shabu Shabu

Those who are interested in trying Japanese beef should certainly give one of these dishes a try.Like other nabe dishes these are both cooked at the table amongst the diners whether at a restaurant or in the home.

Both feature thinly sliced beef served raw to the table.Sukiyaki is made by adding sake, soy sauce, sugar and mirin (sweet cooking sake) to a hot dish of leeks, mushrooms, tofu and, of course, beef, to cook until the sauce is sweet and sticky.

Cooked morsels are dipped into raw egg on the way to the mouth to give a silky coating and to ameliorate the sweet and salt.

Shabu-shabu is more like a normal nabe in that the ingredients are added to a pot of stock.The difference is in the adding of the beef.Simply throwing in the finely sliced, delicately marbled slices of prime beef into the stock and forgetting about them is an unforgivable faux pas.

When eating shabu-shabu, one must pay close attention to how fast the beef cooks -- usually only a few seconds with thin slices in boiling stock.Remove the just cooked beef to your bowl of dipping sauce and eat immediately.