• greg
  • cooks
    • cook blog
  • drinks
  • ferments
  • grows
  • runs
  • aws

greg cooks

nourishing the body

  • appetizer
  • beverage
  • bread
  • breakfast
  • dessert
  • dining
  • dinner
  • ethnic
    • asian
    • Cajun
    • Chinese
    • Greek
    • Indian
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Korean
    • Spanish
    • Szechuan
    • Thai
    • Vietnam
  • lunch
  • meat
    • beef
    • chicken
    • fish
  • vegetarian
  • pasta
  • Pizza

Shabu Shabu in Kobe

December 21, 2008 by greg Leave a Comment

Shabu shabu is another nabe dish made by taking paper thin slices of beef and dipping them into a pot of boiling water or broth for just a few seconds to cook. More on the food in a second. Let me first describe my Thursday in Kobe. This is a wonderful city just west of Osaka. Kobe Pharmaceutical University sits on the hillside looking down upon Kobe’s numerous narrow winding streets. This picture shows one of their WIDE streets! Imagine a street as wide as one car twisting and turning through densly packed homes up the side of a hill. Their big taxis climb those hills every day.

In the morning my host Naito Sensei took me to the Hatsukura sake factory for a tour of their sake museum. There I learned all about how rice is polished, infused with koji spores to convert starch to sugar, and then fermented with yeast. Of course we left with a taste and a bottle!


Dinner that evening was a slighly formal shabu shabu dinner. We ate at a traditional low table on the tatami mats. Actually there was a hole under the table for your feet so you didn’t have to sit cross legged for hours. See the nabe pots ready for action?

This sake is made especially for this restaurant. I have to say it was quite good.

We started with a small appetizer of marinated raw fugu. I would call it a Japanese seviche with its vinegary marinade.


This is onion, garlic, radish and chives to garnish the dipping sauces for the shabu shabu.

A sashimi course, of course!

A bite of crab, seaweed and cucumbers.

This is a bit of fried monkfish. The chili was not very spicy. I’ve never seen a pink batter before. Very festive for the holiday season.

Our sever brought the plates of beef and vegetables.

I am always in awe of the wonderfully marbled beef. Makes for tender shabu shabu.


Our server demonstrated the shabu shabu technique. Grasp the beef slice with your chopsticks and swish it back and forth in the boiling pot for just a few seconds. The dish is names shabu shabu after the sound of the beef swishing in the broth.

The flash cooked beef is immediately plunged into a bowl containing a sesame sauce and eaten.

After the meat is eaten, next come the vegetables. Here you can see tofu, enoki mushrooms, green onions, bean sprouts, mushrooms, carrots, some greens and napa cabbage. The noodles are for the end of the meal.

The veggies cooking away.

We had two kinds of noodles – the clear ones you see served with the vegetables above and these wider noodles that were brought to the table after the vegetables. Also in the pot are some sticky rice cakes cooked along with the noodles.


A perfect end for a wonderul meal – a bowl of macha green tea ice cream. I like the fact that this ice cream is not as sweet as our American versions.

Filed Under: Japanese Tagged With: Japan, Kobe, shabu shabu

archives

  • July 2011 (1)
  • May 2011 (2)
  • April 2011 (1)
  • February 2011 (1)
  • September 2010 (1)
  • August 2010 (1)
  • July 2010 (2)
  • June 2010 (2)
  • May 2010 (1)
  • March 2010 (1)
  • January 2010 (8)
  • December 2009 (2)
  • November 2009 (1)
  • August 2009 (1)
  • July 2009 (3)
  • June 2009 (2)
  • April 2009 (3)
  • March 2009 (20)
  • February 2009 (14)
  • January 2009 (4)
  • December 2008 (17)
  • November 2008 (4)
  • October 2008 (2)
  • September 2008 (5)
  • August 2008 (2)
  • July 2008 (6)
  • June 2008 (7)
  • May 2008 (11)
  • April 2008 (7)
  • March 2008 (6)
  • February 2008 (12)
  • January 2008 (16)
  • December 2007 (10)
  • November 2007 (8)

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2025 ·Delicious Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in