So, I live in Japan, but I know nothing about how to use a donabe, basic recipes, if store bought soup is good, etc.
First, I want to buy a donabe but I don’t want to buy a portable stove (カセットコンロ). I use a normal stove (ガスコンロ) at home. I did a bit of googling and apparently a donabe for a normal stove is shaped differently? Does it means I can’t use a normal donabe on a normal stove?
Second, if anyone is familiar with donabe recipes, what recipes and broths should I try at first? Like, what are the staples for donabe?
Thanks for any help. Ask you can see, I really need it.
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Nabe is pretty much a weekly meal at our house in the late fall through early spring. Don’t know about the pot difference, we just bought one from the market and it works well on our stove. I don’t think it will make much difference if it’s a flame from a portable stove or from your home stove top.
We do kimchi nabe with broth from a package made by Mizkan or my wife makes something up with broth from what she has in the kitchen.
Either way, we do the pretty standard daikon, hakusai, carrot, green onion, shiratake, enoki, tofu and udon with either pork or chicken.
Do you want the kind for making rice (taller sides and not as wide) or the kind for making nabe (the food called nabe, which is basically just a bunch of ingredients cooked in a broth of some kind)?
The store bought nabe soups are good and they usually have suggestions printed on the back. It’s pretty fail-proof though.
Just get a bag of soup, some hakusai cabbage, mushrooms, negi, maybe some carrots or whatever else you want, some thinly sliced meat or small pieces of chicken, chicken meatballs, fish, whatever. Put it all in and put the lid on and turn on the heat. Once it’s cooked you can eat it with some ponzu or sesame dressing or whatever you like.
There are probably videos on YouTube that you can watch for ideas. Sukiyaki and shabu-shabu are good, kimchi-chige, sesame soy milk nabe, tomato nabe, pot-au-feu, chanko nabe… try searching for videos or recipes for those.
Gas conro or regular gas range is fine. If you have an IH heater stove you need to make sure it’s compatible.
Normal stove is fine, but I would avoid using it at the highest heat right off the bat, as clay doesn’t respond that well to extreme changes in temperature.
For easy nabe (as in the recipe) meals, pretty much just put whatever you wanna eat inside and add hot dashi or soup stock, boil it until it’s edible. I like tofu, mushrooms and whatever meat I feel like.
For more advanced stuff you can look up Chinese clay pot recipes, I made Cantonese clay pot rice and also salted + century egg congee.
Nabe is pretty much idiot-proof. How do I know this? Hi, I’m idiot.
– is it a bowl you can use on a stove?
– do you have a stove?
– can you buy your own groceries?
You’re good to go.
Lots of stock comes ready-to-use from your friendly neighborhood kamashin and the like. Not only that, but the recommended produce is often packaged on the soup stock itself.
You boil the soup stock on a stove and yeet anything you think will taste good into the pot. I’m partial to pumpkin stock and pumpkin vegetables, so I usually pick my ingredients around pumpkin.
I’ve found that one can make do fine with water and adding a piece of dried kombu and maybe two or three dried mushrooms; combined with the flavours coming from the meats and vegetables it will create a great nabe-stock.