Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals

I bought the Kindle edition of Japanese Hot Pots a few weeks ago and I couldn't be more pleased with it. I love soup and stew in all forms, and am a big fan of Japanese food: the flavors, textures, healthfulness, and the aesthetics of it. I've eaten hot pots at Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese restaurants and the thought of recreating this style of cooking at my kitchen table intrigued me. I am lucky to be in Queens, NY, which is home to one of the biggest Asian populations in the states and I have access to an abundance of Asian markets, including one that is specifically Japanese nearby. Most of the ingredients can be had at any well stocked American market, natural foods store, and fishmonger. Some of the more specialized ingredients, like enoki mushrooms, can be substituted for, in need be. No negi (Japanese green onion)? Choose the fattest scallions you can find and use 2 for each one. I have also found that some of the specialty items like bonito and kombu for dashi are available right here on Amazon for good prices. What I like most about this style of cooking is that the food is all fresh and healthful and relatively quick and easy to prepare. In fact, all the work in the prep, cutting and slicing veggies, soaking noodles, making dashi (which only takes a total of an hour and can sit in the fridge for several days or be frozen). Once you settle down to the actual cooking, whether on the stove or at the table, it only takes a few minutes to get everything going. Tableside cooking and eating is a wonderful shared experience for family and friends, slow and relaxing, conducive to lots of talk and sharing. So far I have tried the salmon hot pot twice and last night I made shabu shabu. Both were wonderful. I can't wait to try other recipes and to construct some of my own (once you get the hang of matching stock to veggies, tofu, meats/fish, and noodles, you can be creative. To do tableside cooking, I purchased a portable induction burner Max Burton 6200 Deluxe 1800-Watt Induction Cooktop which works with my All Clad soup pot but not my Emile Henry clay dutch oven. But I have now purchased a Le Creuset enamel cast iron 4 qt.Chef's Oven which will work beautifully on the induction burner. Lastly, the book itself is beautifully laid out and photographed and much attention was paid to the details of creating a really useful Kindle e-book, with recipe lists and cross references all linking to one another so that you can jump around easily from recipes to ingredient descriptions, to techniques without ever getting lost.

I've cooked about a third of the recipes in this book since purchasing it over the holidays. I'd be hard-pressed to name one that I didn't like. The book has a lengthy description of ingredients and their various uses as well as cutting techniques, which is great for those who don't know much about japanese cooking ingredients. I also enjoyed the stories and little anecdotes that introduced each recipe as well as the nice pictures of well-arranged nabe -- while it may not affect the taste, it certainly affects the enjoyment when you see the food arranged in a careful and beautiful manner. Salat and Ono write in an engaging manner that is not only clear and concise, but also informative and interesting with regards to food and culture. For those who are looking for home-style japanese recipes this is a very nice cookbook to add to the collection. It has a good balance between complete authenticity and allowing the use of ingredients that aren't native to japanese cooking but which can be more easily found in the US. The instructions and measurements are easy to understand, and there is a wide variety of recipes within general categories such as vegetable/vegetarian, fish, pork, poultry, and so on.

This book contains so much good information and recipes a chef would use. But the ingredients are not available even in the Asian stores unless you go to Los Angeles and we never go south to Los Angeles unless we are passing through it in the middle of the night. I can only use one recipe from the entire book. I am very disappointed. The book is well written but not practical for me. My mother was of Japanese descent, I love NHK, I miss down home Japanese cooking, Japanese restaurants don’t offer them, and I can’t go home to Hawaii anymore. So I am keeping the book anyway.

I've made so many recipes from this book because I love the subtle tastes and pure flavor. The meals are simple but filled with flavor and texture. I'm so happy with this book because it makes the kind of light meals I enjoy and can eat without guilt. This isn't a diet book by any means but when you check out the ingredients, you'll see what I mean. I use an iMac and and an application called Notebook and I've been adding new recipes and information into a Hot Pot cookbook. This kind of cooking isn't meant to be haute cuisine but rather, hearty, tasty ordinary food...well worth it. Ingredients aren't so exotic that you'd never find them unless you lived in an Oriental area and that helps. I have an H-Mart which is a Korean market near me and it has everything I need. Not expensive to make these meals at all. The only problem I had was finding a cooking vessel small enough for just me. There are tons of hot pots you can buy and they are lovely but I have a glass top stove so putting clay on it would have possibly damaged it so I use a top quality Lodge cast iron lidded small bean pot that has a smooth surface on the bottom. Perfect. I'd still like to find a small two handled stainless pot so I'll keep looking. I love this cookbook and the recipes but I love the subtle flavors of oriental cooking. I recommend it if you do as well. It gives you all the info you need on ingredients, methods, utensils, etc.

I lived in Japan for three years, and shabu-shabu, or hot pot cooking, was terrific in the winter while living in a traditional house with no heat except a space heater and huddling under a kotasu (table with a heat bulb and quilt to cover your legs). This book has terrific, authentic recipes in an easy to follow format and the photography is gorgeous. It would be hard to pick this book up without wanting to rush off to an Asian market to get ingredients and start cooking. My boyfriend was raised on Campbell's soup, (no offense to Campbell's but let's face it, it isn't haute cuisine or fine dining) and got all ho-hum about soup until this book came into our house. The pictures got him excited, and the outcome was super. He's a convert. A great gift for others after you get a copy for yourself!

I am currently living in Japan. I have learned how to make quite a lot of Japanese food, but I needed some new ideas to mix things up. This book does a great job introducing you to the main ingredients of Japanese cooking, not only the main ingredients of nabe cooking. I liked the variety of styles of nabe in this book. The recipes don't just feel like repetitions of each other with one changing ingredient. Nabe is particularly great for winter. It is a great way to get all your vegis, meat and flavor in one pot. This cookbook is well written and well informed on authentic Japanese cooking.

I've been using this cookbook for over a year and the recipes create food as good as anything I've had in a Japanese restaurant! I also use Ono & Salat's Japanese Soul Cooking and Japanese Grill cookbooks and have had the same amazing results. These are from-scratch recipes, using Japanese ingredients. We are fortunate to have a great Japanese supermarket, Tokyo Central (formerly Marukai) nearby, and can get anything we need. If you don't, you can get many staples here on Amazon, and the authors do offer some ideas for substitutions. Many of the recipes are labor intensive, with a number of components, such as making your own soup base or dashi. It's absolutely worth it. Many elements, such as dashi, can be made ahead of time and refrigerated or frozen for later use. A lot of Japanese prepared foods contain MSG, so I prefer to make my own whenever possible. There are a lot of specialized ingredients and you'll want a real donabe pot. I use this one. It's pretty and looks nice at the table: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Donabe-People-Mishima-Flower/dp/B004VKTQMI/ref=sr_1_9?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1456156240&sr=1-9&keywords=donabe Everything I've made has been well worth the effort and it's fun gathering around it with friends and family and sharing the goodies.

Has some great recipes for hot pots but I was hoping for more broth recipes that were a bit more complex. I have a dual side electric hot pot and was hoping for a recipe book that provided a variety of broths with complexity versus simple broths like chicken carcass and water. None the less, if you are looking for recipes for one meal hot pots then this is for you.