Shabu-Shabu and Sukiyaki: Japan’s Two Great Hot Pot Traditions

By Yoshi | Japan Unveiled

There is a specific moment in the eating of shabu-shabu that I have been trying to describe accurately for years, and that I have never quite managed to capture in language before now.

You are sitting at a low table. In the centre of the table, a ceramic pot of clear kombu dashi simmers over a portable gas burner. The dashi is hot but not yet boiling — the specific gentle simmer, with small bubbles rising from the kombu at the bottom, that the preparation requires. You pick up a thin slice of beef — so thin you can see light through it — with your chopsticks. You lower it into the simmering broth and swish it back and forth, two or three times. The meat changes colour, from vivid red to a specific pale pink. You remove it, dip it in the sauce, and eat it.

The specific thing I am trying to describe: the eating of meat that has been cooked for exactly the right amount of time — not a second more than it needs — has a specific quality of delicacy that fully cooked meat does not have. The beef is warm. It is barely cooked. It is extraordinarily tender. It carries, undiluted, the specific flavour of the specific beef it is — the fat not yet rendered away, the muscle fibres not yet contracted, the specific mineral quality of the animal’s flesh still fully present.

And the broth, after twenty minutes of cooking vegetables and tofu and several rounds of meat swishing, has become something extraordinary — enriched by everything placed in it, complex in a way that the original clear dashi was not, worth drinking on its own at the end of the meal.

This is shabu-shabu. Let me tell you about it and its richer, more elaborate sibling: sukiyaki.

Shabu-Shabu: The Sound That Named the Dish

The name shabu-shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ) is onomatopoeic — it represents the specific sound of the thin beef slice being swished through hot liquid. This is a perfect name in the way that only genuinely onomatopoeic names can be perfect: it tells you exactly what you are going to do before you do it.

The origin of shabu-shabu as a specifically named dish is relatively recent. The preparation was introduced commercially in Osaka in the early 1950s at the restaurant Suehiro, which claims credit for both the dish and the name. The underlying technique — thin slices of beef cooked briefly in hot liquid — has older roots in Chinese hot pot traditions, particularly the Mongolian hot pot that Chinese cooking absorbed and adapted. But the specific Japanese development, with its specific broth, its specific accompaniments, and its specific sauce traditions, is genuinely Japanese.

Shabu-shabu spread rapidly in postwar Japan during the specific economic boom that made beef accessible to ordinary households for the first time at scale. The democratic quality of the hot pot format — everyone cooking their own food at the table, no elaborate kitchen preparation required, the meal social and participatory — matched the specific social character of the period.

The Preparation: What Goes Into the Pot

The shabu-shabu experience is built around several specific component categories, each of which contributes to the evolving complexity of the shared broth.

The broth. Standard shabu-shabu uses a kombu (kelp) dashi as its base — the specific mineral depth of kombu without the smoky complexity of katsuobushi, which would overpower the delicate flavour of the thinly sliced meat. The broth is initially clear and mild; it develops across the meal as fat and proteins from the cooking ingredients enrich it. Some restaurants now offer a choice of broths — the standard kombu dashi, a chicken-based broth, or a spicy miso broth — and the custom of cooking half the pot in two different broths simultaneously has become popular.

The meat. Beef is the standard choice for shabu-shabu, and the specific quality of the shabu-shabu beef matters enormously. The cuts used — typically ribeye, sirloin, or shoulder — are sliced to a specific thinness of approximately one to two millimetres that allows the brief cooking time to work. The thin slice that can be cooked in two to three swishes is a different eating experience from the thick slice that requires several minutes in the pot. The marbling of wagyu-grade beef — the specific fat distribution that produces the melt-in-the-mouth quality of high-grade Japanese beef — is particularly well-suited to the shabu-shabu format, where the brief cooking time preserves the fat’s specific texture. Pork shabu-shabu has also become popular, particularly in summer, when the lighter preparation feels more appropriate to the season.

The vegetables. The standard shabu-shabu vegetable selection: hakusai (napa cabbage), negi (long onion), shungiku (chrysanthemum greens), enoki mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, tofu, and shirataki (konjac noodles). These are not arbitrary — each contributes a specific flavour and textural element to the evolving broth, and each has a specific cooking time that the experienced shabu-shabu eater manages by placing different ingredients in the pot at different moments.

The sauces. Two sauces are standard in shabu-shabu: ponzu (the citrus-soy sauce that is the primary sauce for the meat) and goma dare (sesame sauce, a rich, slightly sweet preparation that is an alternative dipping sauce). The specific choice between ponzu and goma dare — ponzu’s sharp acidity against the rich beef, or goma dare’s creaminess complementing it — is personal and the subject of genuine preference variation among shabu-shabu enthusiasts. Many serious shabu-shabu eaters use ponzu for the first several pieces of meat and switch to goma dare as the richer flavour becomes more appealing later in the meal.

The Shime: The Ending That Is Actually the Highlight

One of the most specifically Japanese dimensions of the shabu-shabu experience is the shime (〆) — the “ending,” the final course that uses the broth that has been enriched across the entire meal.

By the time the main eating is complete, the shabu-shabu broth has been transformed. The original clear kombu dashi has absorbed the fat from the beef, the minerals from the vegetables, the proteins from the tofu — it has become a genuinely complex, deeply flavoured liquid that is quite different from what it started as. The shime takes this enriched broth and uses it as the base for a final preparation.

The two standard shime options for shabu-shabu: zōsui (雑炊 — rice porridge, in which cooked rice is added to the remaining broth and simmered until the rice has absorbed the broth and thickened it into a porridge), and udon (in which udon noodles are added to the broth and cooked until tender, then eaten with a small amount of the remaining sauce). Both are excellent. Both demonstrate the specific Japanese understanding that the broth itself — the accumulated product of a long, social meal — is one of the meal’s most valuable elements and should not be wasted.

Sukiyaki: The Rich, Sweet Older Sibling

Sukiyaki (すき焼き) is the hot pot preparation that preceded shabu-shabu by several decades and that represents a completely different culinary philosophy applied to similar ingredients.

Where shabu-shabu is delicate, light, and focused on the pure flavour of the ingredients, sukiyaki is rich, sweet, and specifically flavour-forward. Where shabu-shabu’s broth is clear and supports the ingredients, sukiyaki’s warishita (割り下 — the cooking liquid) is already deeply flavoured and actively seasons everything cooked in it.

The warishita — the sukiyaki cooking liquid — is a mixture of soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar in specific proportions that vary by region and by household tradition. It is intensely savoury and specifically sweet, and it does two things to the ingredients cooked in it: it flavours them, and it glazes them with a specific caramelised coating as the liquid reduces. The beef cooked in warishita does not taste primarily of beef — it tastes of warishita-enriched beef, the flavours of the sauce and the meat having merged into something that is neither the sauce alone nor the meat alone.

Kanto vs. Kansai: The Sukiyaki Regional War

Sukiyaki in Japan exists in two distinct regional forms — the Kanto style and the Kansai style — that are different enough in their preparation to produce genuinely different eating experiences from the same core ingredients.

Kanto style (関東風). In the Kanto region — Tokyo and surrounding areas — sukiyaki is prepared by first making the warishita (the cooking liquid) separately, then pouring it over the ingredients as they cook in the pan. The warishita is added gradually across the cooking process to maintain the flavour balance. All ingredients are typically added to the pot simultaneously or in a planned sequence, and the entire preparation proceeds in a relatively controlled, step-by-step manner.

Kansai style (関西風). In the Kansai region — Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe — sukiyaki is prepared differently. The beef is placed in the pan first, without any liquid, and seared briefly in a small amount of beef fat. Soy sauce is poured directly over the searing meat, then mirin and sugar are added, and the other ingredients are placed around and over the beef. Water is added as needed to prevent burning. The Kansai approach produces a more intensely flavoured result at the point of first contact between the beef and the seasoning, because the meat has been seared rather than simmered from the start.

The preference between the two styles is, for Japanese people from the respective regions, a matter of genuine identity rather than simply aesthetic preference. The Kanto person who is served Kansai-style sukiyaki may find it disconcertingly different from their expectation. The Kansai person who encounters Kanto-style sukiyaki may find it less interesting than the preparation they grew up with. This is the specific character of Japanese regional food identity: it is not merely preference but memory, and memory is not easily renegotiated.

The Raw Egg: Sukiyaki’s Most Distinctive Element

There is a specific element of sukiyaki that surprises almost every non-Japanese person encountering the dish for the first time, and that is entirely invisible until someone explains that it is there.

The cooked ingredients of sukiyaki — the glazed beef, the softened vegetables, the tofu that has absorbed the warishita — are, before eating, dipped in a small bowl of raw beaten egg. The heat of the freshly cooked ingredient immediately begins to cook the egg coating, producing a specific slightly-cooked-but-not-fully-set egg film around the ingredient. The egg simultaneously cools the hot ingredient enough to eat immediately, adds a specific richness, and softens the intensity of the warishita’s sweetness with the mild, clean flavour of raw egg.

The egg-dipping is not mandatory — some people prefer their sukiyaki without it — but it is traditional enough that declining it feels, to many Japanese sukiyaki enthusiasts, like a genuine departure from the authentic experience. The specific combination of the sweet-savoury warishita-glazed beef and the raw egg coating is one of the most specifically Japanese flavour combinations available, and one that rewards the willingness to engage with it fully.

The Specific Occasion: When Shabu-Shabu and Sukiyaki Are Eaten

Both shabu-shabu and sukiyaki occupy a specific place in the Japanese meal occasion hierarchy that is worth understanding, because they are not everyday foods in the way that ramen or gyudon are everyday foods.

Shabu-shabu and sukiyaki are specific celebration foods — the meals eaten on specific occasions: the family New Year dinner, the anniversary dinner, the meal that marks a specific achievement, the gathering of people who matter to each other for a specific reason. Their specific occasion status reflects both their cost (quality beef is expensive) and their specific social format (the shared hot pot that everyone cooks together).

The shared hot pot format is itself a social statement: it requires that everyone at the table be present simultaneously, that everyone participate in the cooking, that the pace of the meal be set collectively rather than individually. The hot pot meal cannot be eaten alone — it is definitionally a social meal, structured by the shared vessel and the shared heat and the shared evolving broth that all participants create together.

This is why shabu-shabu and sukiyaki appear so often at the specific moments in Japanese social life when gathering matters most: the year-end family dinner, the farewell party for a colleague, the celebration that the regular izakaya meal cannot adequately mark. The food itself is excellent. The format is the point.

Choosing the Right Restaurant: What to Look For

For visitors to Japan who want to experience shabu-shabu or sukiyaki at their best, several observations about what to look for are worth making.

The specialist restaurant — the establishment that serves only shabu-shabu or only sukiyaki — will typically be significantly better than the general restaurant that includes these dishes among many others. The specialist has developed specific sourcing relationships for the beef, specific expertise in the preparation of the broth and the warishita, and specific service knowledge that allows the staff to guide diners through the meal in ways that optimise the experience.

The major specialist chains — Seryna, Kisoji, and Nabezo for shabu-shabu; Imahan and Ninnikuya for sukiyaki — offer reliable quality at the higher end of the price range. The nomihoudai (all-you-can-eat) shabu-shabu chains that exist across Japan — Shabu-yo, Shabusen — offer more accessible pricing with predictably lower beef quality, and are a perfectly acceptable entry point for the first-time experience.

The specific thing to ask when choosing: the grade of beef available. The price difference between standard-grade shabu-shabu beef and A4 or A5 wagyu shabu-shabu beef is significant, and so is the difference in the eating experience. If the budget allows, the wagyu option produces an experience that the standard beef cannot replicate. If the budget does not allow the wagyu option, the standard beef in a specialist restaurant is still a very good meal.

— Yoshi 🍲 Central Japan, 2026

Enjoyed this? You might also like: “Wagyu Beef: Japan’s Most Expensive Meat — and Why It’s Worth Every Yen” and “Yakiniku: The Japanese BBQ Culture That Has Its Own Philosophy” — both available on Japan Unveiled.