Sukiyaki (すき焼き), Kanto Warishita Method

// SUPPLY LIST

// OPERATIONS

1. 1 Make the warishita first, at least two and a half hours before you want to eat. In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring 120 ml of the sake and all the mirin to a brisk simmer for 1 minute to drive off the raw alcohol, until the steam smells sweet and round rather than sharp in the back of the nose, then add the sugar, soy sauce and 150 ml of the dashi, drop the heat and hold it at a bare simmer, about 85C/185F, where a few lazy bubbles break around the edge but the surface is otherwise still, for 2 minutes, stirring once, until the sugar has completely dissolved. Do not let it boil hard: warishita is a seasoning liquid, not a reduction, and a rolling boil blows off the mirin's fragrance and pushes it towards a syrup that scorches black on the pan wall. Cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes, then rest it covered for at least 2 hours, or overnight in the fridge, which rounds the sharp edge off the mirin and is the single biggest improvement you can make to home sukiyaki. You should have about 580 ml, which is the whole meal's supply.
2. 2 While the warishita rests, deal with the beef, and have it out of the fridge for the last 30 minutes before you cook so it is at room temperature. Lay the slices out overlapping like roof tiles on a cold platter, separated enough to lift one at a time with chopsticks. If you are slicing it yourself rather than buying a sukiyaki cut, freeze a well-marbled block for 60-90 minutes until the surface is firm at roughly -3C/27F but a knife tip still enters the centre, then slice against the grain at 2-2.5 mm with a long blade in a single drawing stroke. Thickness is not negotiable here: at 5 mm the slices need long enough in the pan that they seize and go stringy, and no amount of egg will rescue them.
3. 3 Bring a small pan of water to a rolling boil and blanch the shirataki for 2 minutes, then drain and rinse under cold water. This is not optional tidiness, it removes the limey smell of the konnyaku, which otherwise perfumes the whole pot and pulls the warishita sour. Cut the strands roughly into 10 cm lengths with scissors so they are manageable with chopsticks.
4. 4 Prepare all the vegetables and arrange them with the tofu and shirataki on one or two large platters, each in its own group, and put them on the table with the beef. Sukiyaki is cooked and eaten in continuous rounds with everyone at the table, so nothing can be left in the kitchen half-cut once you start; the platter is the recipe's mise en place made visible, and the moment you go back to the board for more cabbage the pan overcooks behind you.
5. 5 Crack one egg per person into a small individual bowl and beat it with chopsticks for 8-10 strokes only, just until the yolk and white are loosely combined and still streaky. Do not whisk it to a froth: you want a loose, clinging coat that tempers the heat and salt of the beef, not an aerated foam that slides off. Leave the bowls at each place with the spare eggs to hand, since a bowl that has taken four or five rounds of hot beef goes thin and warm and wants topping up.
6. 6 Set a shallow cast-iron sukiyaki pan, 26-28 cm across and about 5 cm deep, on a tabletop burner over medium-high heat and let it get genuinely hot, 180-200C/356-392F, which you can read by flicking on a droplet of water: it should crack, break into beads and vanish within about 2 seconds. If instead it balls into a single bead that rolls around the pan intact, you are past 200C/392F and the first slices will scorch before the warishita touches them, so pull the pan off for a moment. Take the knob of beef tallow with chopsticks and rub it over the whole base and up the sides for about 1 minute, until it has rendered to a thin gloss and the pan smells nutty and beefy; leave the shrunken piece of fat in the pan.
7. 7 Lay 3 or 4 slices of beef flat in the pan in a single layer with space between them, give them 5 seconds on the hot greased iron, then immediately pour about 80 ml of warishita over and around the meat. It will hiss and foam hard. Simmer 40-60 seconds, turning each slice once, until the surface has gone from red to a lacquered pink-brown while the inside of the fold is still rosy, then lift the slices straight out into the waiting egg bowls and eat them at once. Beef left sitting in the pan past about 90 seconds turns grey, granular and dry, and this first round is the round the whole dish is judged on.
8. 8 Now build the pan for the long middle of the meal. Turn the heat down to medium-low and lay in the negi cut-side down along one side, the hakusai stems beside them, the yaki-dofu and shiitake in their own quarters, and the shirataki in a tight bundle at the far edge. Keeping the shirataki penned in one corner is worth doing, though not for the reason usually given: the Japan Konnyaku Association's own side-by-side test found no measurable difference in the beef's texture or pH with shirataki in the pan, and yaki-dofu carries twice the calcium anyway, so the real reason is simply that loose strands wander everywhere and drink the warishita faster than anything else in the pan. Pour in enough warishita to pool about 5 mm deep, roughly 250 ml, which in a pan this wide comes a third of the way up the vegetables rather than covering them, and hold a lazy bubble at around 95C/203F for 6-8 minutes, until the negi is translucent to the core and slumps when nudged and a cabbage stem bends without snapping.
9. 9 Add the hakusai leaves, the enoki clumps and the shungiku into the gaps and cook for 60-90 seconds only, until the shungiku has collapsed to a glossy dark green and smells grassy and faintly bitter. Serve those out immediately; past two minutes the greens go slippery and aggressively bitter, and the enoki loses its squeak.
10. 10 Carry on in rounds for the rest of the meal, adding 3 or 4 slices of beef at a time for 40-60 seconds each and replenishing the vegetables as they are eaten. As they give up their water and the liquid reduces and darkens, taste it off a spoon every round: it should read sweet first, then salty, and coat the back of the spoon lightly. Loosen it with a splash of the reserved sake and 2-3 tbsp of dashi or water as needed, and add fresh warishita only when the level drops below the vegetables. Chasing a thin pan with more warishita instead of water is how a good pot turns into a salt bomb by round four.
11. 11 To cook it the Kansai way instead, which is the version defended in Osaka and Kyoto, skip the warishita entirely. Heat the pan to the same 180C/356F, grease it with tallow, lay in 2 or 3 slices of beef and sear them 20-30 seconds a side until the fat turns glassy and the edges catch, then sprinkle 1 tbsp sugar directly over the surface of the meat and pour 1 tbsp soy sauce around the rim of the pan. Keep to roughly equal spoons of sugar and soy per round: doubling the soy, which is the usual home-cook slip, gives you a pan that is flatly salty from the first bite and cannot be walked back. Let it hiss and caramelise for 10-15 seconds until the sugar goes tacky and smells of toffee, eat that round straight away, then add the vegetables and let their water plus more sake, soy and sugar added by eye build the broth as you go. It starts sharper and sweeter and ends deeper than the Kanto pan, and it is the only method in which the beef is ever properly browned.
12. 12 When the beef and vegetables are finished, lift the pan off the burner and let it rest for 2 minutes so the sediment settles and the liquid stops spitting, then skim off any grey foam. For the shime, loosen what is left with 100-150 ml dashi or water until it tastes like a light seasoned broth rather than a glaze, bring it back to a simmer and turn the cooked udon through it for 2 minutes until heated through and glossy with the sauce; skipping the loosening leaves the noodles coated in a reduction three times too salty to eat. Serve small bowls of steamed short-grain rice and a dish of pickles alongside from the very first round, with cold beer or sake and a glass of iced water to cut the sweetness.

// CLASSIFICATIONS