Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals

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'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.

I hesitate to say that I agree that the ingredients are very hard to find. I hesitate because another reviewer from Ohio stated the seafood and other ingredients in these recipes were hard to find and she got slammed with snarky comments -basically saying if you live in Ohio, you shouldn't buy a cookbook that calls for seafood. People are so mean. I live in Cincinnati and we have pretty good access to specialty ingredients - but it's definitely not New York City or Japan. I purchased the cookbook because of the great reviews. I assumed I could use typical Asian ingredients and the normal seafood I could get at the chain grocery store. And I was able to put together one recipe that was fine. I will eventually take a weekend and drive 35 miles away and purchase unusual ingredients from our local mega international store, Jungle Jim's, but for now my specially-bought $80 hot pot still has dust on it. I do like the book, the photos, the explanations, etc. I just want folks to be aware of this particular issue.

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 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.

All-in-all a pretty good book and one that I will cook quite a bit out of. When I first flipped through this, I though it was a bit lacking, but them I took a closer look at the detailing and variation in the cooking sauces for the hot pots...very nice. Thing I liked 1) Nice, varied recipes with solid historic sidebars so you understand why the dish is the way that it is. 2) Great side information that provides general infomation on serving, ingredients, construction technique for those, such as myself, that are just exploring this type of dish. 3) Really nice photography. Sometimes didn't really line up with the content of the text, but this is pretty minor. A really nice volume about a cooking style that is pretty cool. The most complete information on the subject that I have been able to find. A little more information of physically cooking with a donabe would have been good (gas/electric, how high to heat, etc.) but this is pretty minor.

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.

Das Buch hat mich in allen Bereichen überzeugt: Vielfältige, authentische Rezepte für japanische Eintopfgerichte, schöne Bilder, super Basis-Rezepte. Klar, wir sprechen hier über ein sehr spezielles Thema der japanischen Küche, Nabemono/Eintöpfe. Es geht nicht um Ramen oder Suppen! Dafür würde ich vom gleichen Co-Autor, Harris Salad, das Buch "Takashis Noodels" oder "Japanese Soul Cooking" empfehlen. Die Zutatenliste verlangt nach sehr typisch japanischen Produkten, die es nicht immer im Standard-Asialaden gibt: Thunfischflocken, Kombu-Algen, Mizuna, spezielle Miso-Pasten etc. Wer sich aber den Aufwand macht, japanische Läden (online oder offline) zu finden, dessen Mühe wird belohnt werden, denn japanische Eintöpfe sind absolut perfekt für die kalte Jahreszeit, vielschichtig im Geschmack und ein richtiges Event, wenn Gäste kommen. Alles in allem ein sehr gelungenes Buch.

Really excellent cookbook that explains the ingredients, regions, and dishes. Super easy (and fast cooking!) with beautiful photos, and the recipes that I've tried so far are quite delicious (although I admit that I tend to increase the amount of dashi & konbu to boost the flavours). Definitely a worthwhile addition to your recipe book collection - lots of vegetarian options too.

I've cooked several recipes and they have all been delicious. I hightly recommend the beef sukiyai! With one-pot hotpots the idea is that you make the soup base, then pile in the different ingredients, put a lid on and simmer. It takes more time to chop things than it does to cook, I'd say most meals can be on the table in 20 minutes or so. There is also a suggestion for how to eat them fondue-style if you want to make it more of an occasion. Ingredients are mostly easy to find in most supermarkets, although there are a few obscure items that you will only find in an oriental shop, such as konnyaku. However, you don't HAVE to use every ingredient listed as the hotpots work with just about any meat or veg. There are a lot of fish and meat dishes but you can easily adjust them to make them vegetarian. There are lots of veggies which makes the meals healthy, although I cut down on the recommended amounts of soy sauce as it seems like far too much (a whole cup is a bit excessive!) and I cut down on Sake as well as it costs too much! The dishes I have made taste none the worse for it though so feel free to adjust amounts according to taste and budget. The food is warming, hearty and wholesome. What more do you need on a cold winter day?

Fantastic book, informative, well written and well illustrated; offers plenty of brilliant ideas for the beginner; removes the fear of unfamiliar ingredients.

Ich war auf der Suche nach einem japanischen Kochbuch für Anfänger. Und da ich Ramen und Suppengerichte sehr mag, habe ich dieses Buch bestellt. Nun, das Buch ist nichts für Anfänger: Obwohl man hier eine Vielfalt an Rezepten findet, sind die Zutatenlisten doch sehr ausführlich und ich bezweifle, dass ich diese Zutaten beim gewöhnlichen Asia-Shop bekomme. Dieses Buch ist eher was für erfahrene Köche.