🍲 Sukiyaki (Beef hot pot)
"Sukiyaki" is a dish where thinly sliced beef, along with ingredients like green onions, chrysanthemum greens, and grilled tofu, is cooked together in a broth made from a base of soy sauce, sugar, and sake. In traditional Tokyo establishments, the cooking method has evolved to involve heating a pot, melting beef fat in it, then saut ing the beef before adding the remaining ingredients and seasonings for simmering. This method, similar to the one used in Kansai (western Japan), became the mainstream after the Great Kanto Earthquake. In the mid-Edo period, there existed a dish in Kansai called "uosuki" or "okisuki," where plows were used as grills to cook shellfish and fish. The term "sukiyaki" is believed to have originated from grilling beef with these plows and calling it "suki-yaki." However, this is a Kansai-specific story. Since the imperial decree prohibiting meat consumption by Emperor Tenmu in 675 AD, cattle and horses were considered valuable labor assets, and their consumption was not publicly allowed until the Meiji Restoration. It was only after the opening of Yokohama in 1859, alongside the establishment of the British embassy in Edo's Takanawa in 1860, that orders for beef were received. However, it took an entire day to source beef in Yokohama. Thus, when a cattle processing facility was established in Shiba Shirokane, meat-eating culture spread, and restaurants serving a dish called "gyunabe" (beef hot pot) opened one after another in Tokyo, becoming a major trend. Gyunabe was considered a treat for commoners liberated from meat restrictions and could be seen as a representative dish of the civilization and enlightenment era. Initially, to mitigate the gamey odor, miso-based broths were predominant. As meat quality improved, additional ingredients like tofu and shirataki were included, and a sauce made with soy sauce, sugar, and sake was used for simmering. However, after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, Tokyo's gyunabe restaurants suffered a significant setback, with most closing down. Subsequently, the name for the dish "sukiyaki" from Kansai was adopted in the Kanto region, where both specialized restaurants and households began using a method similar to that of Kansai for cooking. In Kansai, the meat is first grilled, and then broth and vegetables are added, while in Kanto, especially in homes, boiling the broth before adding both meat and vegetable