Kansai (Osaka–Kyoto), Japan
Sukiyaki
Thin-sliced beef and vegetables simmered at the table in a sweet-soy *warishita* sauce, dipped in raw egg — Meiji-era Japan's beef-celebration hot pot.
Dip in raw egg.
Each diner cracks a raw egg into a small bowl, whisks it lightly, and uses it as a dipping sauce for the hot beef and vegetables straight from the pan. The cool, slightly viscous egg coats the hot meat, tempering the heat and adding a custardy richness — and the salmonella risk is negligible with Japanese egg-handling standards. Western kitchens often skip this step; it's the part of the dish most worth not skipping.
4 · Plate
Kansai (Osaka–Kyoto), Japan
Sukiyaki
Thin-sliced beef and vegetables simmered at the table in a sweet-soy *warishita* sauce, dipped in raw egg — Meiji-era Japan's beef-celebration hot pot.
A Meiji-era invention. Japan banned land-mammal meat for 1200 years (mostly under Buddhist influence); the Meiji Restoration’s 1872 lifting of the ban triggered a wave of new Japanese-Western beef dishes — gyudon, beef stew, tonkatsu — and sukiyaki was the most domestic of them. The Kansai version (cooking the beef first on the iron pan with sugar and soy, then adding broth and vegetables) is the original; the Kanto version (mixing everything in the warishita broth from the start) is the variant.
Sukiyaki and shabu-shabu are often confused. Both are tabletop hot pots with thin-sliced beef. The difference is the cooking liquid: sukiyaki uses a sweet soy-mirin sauce (concentrated, sticky, brown); shabu-shabu uses a clear kombu-dashi broth (light, almost flavourless). Sukiyaki coats the meat; shabu-shabu lets the meat speak for itself.
Shime with udon.
At the end of the meal, when most of the beef is gone, udon noodles or rice goes into the remaining sweet-soy broth — *shime* (closing). The starch absorbs the concentrated sauce and turns into the dish's finale. Japanese hot-pot meals are designed in three acts: ingredients, then noodles or rice, then end.