When it’s winter we all love comfy food that warms us up like stews and soups. Japan has some amazing winter dishes and one of the most popular is the very nutritious and tasty Hot Pot. Known in Japan as Nabemono (鍋物, なべ物, nabe “cooking pot” + mono “thing”) There are quite a variety of hot pot dishes to bring warmth to the cold winter days. Nabemono are kept hot at the dining tables with portable stoves, its even cooked at the table in many cases. The diners gets the chance to pick whatever cooked ingredient they want from the pot, which is then eaten with a dip or a broth. More ingredients can be added to the pot during the meal.

There are two main types of nabemono (a) flavoured stock (mostly with Kombu) like yudōfu (湯豆腐) and mizutaki (水炊き), eaten with a dipping sauce (tare) to enjoy the taste of the ingredients themselves; and (b) strongly flavoured stock, typically with miso, soy sauce, dashi (traditional Japanese soup base) , and/or sweet soy types such as yosenabe (寄鍋), oden (おでん), and sukiyaki (すき焼き), eaten without further flavouring. Nabe’s soup base is mostly made from dashi , soy sauce and sake. There are many different types of nabemono, depending on the ingredients used. Stews featuring oysters, scallops, cod, salmon, and chicken are very popular. One of the best examples is known as chanko nabe. It contains chicken, seafood, potatoes, and other vegetables, a Hot Pot dish that is known to give lots of stamina and is a favourite of Sumo wrestlers, because it helps them gain weight.

More examples include Yosenabe: Yose (寄) means “putting together”, implying that all things (e.g., meat, seafood, egg, chicken, tofu and vegetables) are cooked together in a pot. Then there is Motsunabe (もつ鍋): made with beef or pork offal. Its Ingredients vary from restaurant to restaurant, but it is typical to boil the fresh cow offal with cabbage and garlic chives. Nabe also has regional variants like in Hokkaidō you get Ishikari-nabe: A hot pot of salmon stewed in a miso-based broth with vegetables. With typical ingredients such as daikon, tofu, konjac, Chinese cabbage, potato, Welsh onion, shungiku, shiitake mushroom and butter. In the Chūetsu region there is Momiji-nabe, a hot pot with venison, burdock, shiitake mushroom, Welsh onion, konjac, tofu, green vegetables, stewed in a miso-based broth.

The pots used in nabe cooking traditionally are made of clay (土鍋, donabe) or thick cast iron (鉄鍋, tetsunabe). Clay pots can keep warm for a while after being taken off the fire, while cast iron pots evenly distribute heat and are preferable for dishes like sukiyaki. These Pots are usually placed in the centre of dining tables and are shared by multiple people. This is considered the most sociable way to eat with friends and family, and according to many Japanese nabe tastes even better when served in traditional Japanese style, by surrounding a table under which there is a kotatsu!