As we speak within the SoraKitchen, we try and make sukiyaki with zero ingredient chopping and only one button press.
With crisp fall climate on the way in which, our stomachs are already trying ahead to considered one of our favourite consolation meals, scorching pot. Particularly, we’re trying ahead to the king of Japanese scorching pot dishes, sukiyaki. There’s actually nothing fairly like the enjoyment of sitting round a desk with a gaggle of buddies or relations, speaking and laughing as you prepare dinner the substances little by little and share within the best act of selflessness, letting another person know when a slice of meat or morsel of vegetable has been cooked to perfection and is able to be eaten.
Sadly, plenty of that doesn’t apply to our Japanese-language reporter Seiji Nakazawa. Whereas he does deeply love sukiyaki, Seiji lives by himself, and most nights of the week he eats dinner by himself too. So all that communal anticipation and pleasure that comes from everybody pitching in to cut the substances plus the dialog as you look forward to them to stew? As an alternative of these, Seiji simply will get the effort of doing all of the prep work by himself, the tedium of watching the substances prepare dinner by himself, after which the extra trouble of scrubbing the big cooking pot when he’s completed, once more, all by himself.
And but, Seiji nonetheless desires to eat sukiyaki, so he bought to questioning if there’s a better technique to make it, at which level his ideas turned to, as ours so usually do right here at SoraNews24, to rice cookers.
We’ve been stunned time and time once more at how versatile these kitchen home equipment are, and Seiji requested himself the query “Can I make sukiyaki by simply tossing every part in a rice cooker and hitting the ‘prepare dinner’ button?”
So it was off to the grocery retailer to seize the important substances, which had been:
● Sliced beef strips (242 grams [8.5 ounces])
● A pack of sliced greens (Chinese language cabbage, inexperienced onion, carrots,
● Sukiyaki broth (750 grams [26.5 ounces])
● Eggs
Keep in mind, Seiji’s purpose was to make sukiyaki whereas doing as little work as potential, in order that’s why he went with the pre-sliced meat and vegetable packs. As soon as he was again from the shop, Seiji opened up the lid of the rice cooker and tossed in all the greens, all the meat, and all the broth (in different phrases, every part besides the eggs, which, as we’ll see later, are literally an elective ingredient).
Then he closed the lid, hit the “prepare dinner” button, and went again to serious about online game ninja women.
▼ “Hmm…I nonetheless suppose Mai’s costume ought to tear…”
45 minutes later, the rice cooker’s prepare dinner cycle was completed, and it was time to test the outcomes.
Although this was Seiji’s first time to attempt to make sukiyaki this manner, we’ve cooked sufficient non-rice issues in our rice cooker that we had been pretty assured that the substances can be cooked and, on the very least, edible. Our greatest concern was what would occur to the broth. As a scorching pot, sukiyaki is meant to nonetheless have broth when you’re consuming it, and its moist mixture of savory and candy flavors makes a wonderful complement to a bowl of white rice. If you consider what occurs once you use a rice cooker for its authentic meant function, although, you begin by filling it with rice and water, and as soon as the cooking cycle is finished the water is fully gone, having been absorbed into the rice or spouted off as steam. So would the identical factor occur with Seiji’s sukiyaki, leaving him with a pile of steamed meat and veggies however no broth?
Nope! Popping open the lid, Seiji noticed that not solely was every part cooked, he nonetheless had loads of broth!
With the scent of sukiyaki now wafting up and filling the room, Seiji excitedly plated a pattern to style…
…and it was scrumptious! Not solely had the rice maker made sukiyaki, it had made actually good sukiyaki, with every part filled with taste, even supposing Seiji hadn’t a lot as lower a single ingredient or given the pot a single stir to get this meal prepared.
That is the place the eggs come into play, as in Japan it’s widespread to crack a uncooked egg right into a dish and use it as a dipping sauce when consuming sukiyaki. This isn’t one thing that everybody does, although, and relying on the place you might be on the earth consuming uncooked egg might or will not be one thing you’re comfy doing, or one thing that’s medically advisable because of native egg provide and dealing with protocols. Seiji, although, right here in Japan the place consuming uncooked egg like this isn’t thought of harmful or unappetizing, is glad to report that rice cooker sukiyaki goes simply as nicely with uncooked egg as sukiyaki made the extra conventional manner does.
As an added bonus, since rice cookers are designed to maintain the rice heat after it’s completed cooking, ours additionally saved Seiji’s sukiyaki heat as he was consuming, at a pleasant, reasonable temperature that saved the flavour recent with out scalding his tongue.
In the event you’re a sukiyaki veteran, you might need observed that there are a couple of widespread substances, like mushroom and tofu, that we didn’t use on this experiment, Now that we all know how good the baseline outcomes are, we’re trying ahead to sprucing up our rice cooker sukiyaki with issues like these as we get deeper into fall, and hopefully they’ll prove simply in addition to our easy model right here. For now, although, it’s nice to know that we will make sukiyaki with simply the press of a button.
Photographs ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]