Steamboat (food)

Steamboats refer to a variety of dishes eaten throughout East Asia, where ingredients are cooked in a simmering pot of broth at the table, usually communally, similar to a fondue.

Typical steamboat ingredients include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, tofu, noodles or seafood. The cooked food is either eaten with a dipping sauce, or sometimes as a soup.

In many areas, steamboats are often eaten in the winter.

Varieties

Japan

Japan has a wide range of steamboat dishes, collectively known as nabemono. They can be divided into styles where the ingredients are simmered in a light flavoured stock and then dipped in a sauce before eating , and where ingredients are stewed in a soy sauce based or a miso-based broth. There are many varieties; below are some of the more popular ones.
* Yosenabe: is one of the most popular nabemono in Japan. Yose (寄) means putting together and ideally similar to German "Eintopf", thus implies that all things (e.g., meat, seafood, egg, tofu and vegetables) are cooked together in a pot. "Yosenabe" is typically based on a broth made with miso or soy sauce flavourings.

* Chankonabe (ちゃんこ鍋): was originally served only to Sumo wrestlers. "Chankonabe" is served with more ingredients than other nabemono, as it was developed to help sumo wrestlers gain weight. Many recipes exist but usually contain meatballs, chicken, vegetables such as Chinese cabbage and udon

* Yudofu: a very simple dish of tofu simmered in a kombu stock and served with ponzu and various condiments.

* Sukiyaki: thinly sliced beef, negi, tofu, ito konnyaku (jelly-noodes), shungiku, various types of mushrooms and other ingredients, simmered in a shallow cast-iron pot in soy sauce, sugar and mirin and dipped into a small bowl of beaten raw egg by the diner before eating.

* Oden

* Shabu-shabu: similar to Chinese hot pot. Thinly sliced beef simmered in a potful of stock along with tofu, mushrooms and various vegetables, and served with a variety of dipping sauces such as ponzu. Ingredients such as pork, chicken or seafood are occasionally used instead of beef. Chinese hot pot was introduced to the Japanese during their colonial rule of Manchuria, and upon their return to Japan following the end of the war, they recreated the dish replacing lamb with beef with which the Japanese were more familiar.

* Motsunabe (もつ鍋): made with beef or pork offal, originally a local cuisine of Fukuoka but popularised nationwide in the 1990s because of its taste and reasonable price. The ingredients of motsunabe vary from restaurant to restaurant, but typical is to boil the fresh cow offal with cabbage and garlic chives. After having offal and vegetables, the rest of soup is used to cook champon noodles. The soup base are mainly soy sauce or miso.

* Mizutaki: chicken pieces simmered with other ingredients in stock and served with a dipping sauce such as ponzu. A traditional specialty of Fukuoka, but eaten throughout Japan for hundreds of years.

China

The word "Steamboat" that is commonly used these days in many countries is in fact a mis-spelt, spread by migrant Chinese, who have problem saying properly the word, "Steambowl". It is so wide-spread nowadays that it is appearing everywhere, anywhere in Chinese restaurants and on food packagings.
Chinese steamboats are known as hot pot, or sometimes Chinese Fondue. "Huo Guo" (zh-tsp|t=火鍋|s=火锅|p=huǒguō) is the Chinese name for hot pot, where "huǒ" means "fire", while "guō" refers to "pot".

It originated in northern China and spread to the south during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618–906). Over time it was enhanced with different kinds of meat, and in the south with seafood. By the Qing Dynasty, the hot pot became popular throughout most of China.

The cooking pot is often sunken into the table and fueled by propane, or alternatively is above the table and fueled by hot coals. The ingredients are loaded individually into the hot cooking broth by chopsticks, and cooking time is brief. The food is then dipped in a sauce before eating.

* Beijing: Different kinds of hot pot can be found in Beijing—typically, more modern eateries offer the sectioned bowl with differently flavored broths in each section. More traditional or older establishments serve a fragrant, but mild, broth in the firepot, which is a large brass vessel, which is heated by burning coals in a central chimney. Broth is boiled in a deep, donut-shaped bowl surrounding the chimney. Mutton hot pot (zh-t|涮羊肉) is one notable variation, as mutton is widely consumed in Northern China.

* The Manchurian hot pot (zh-t|東北酸菜火鍋) uses plenty of Chinese sauerkraut (zh-t|酸菜) to make the pot's stew sour.

* Sichuan hot pot.

* In Cantonese style hot pot, a raw egg is sometimes mixed into the condiments to help bind the condiments to the food. Because newly cooked food are hot, this hot food touching the condiments mixed with raw egg will cook the egg and bind the condiment to the food.

* In Xishuangbanna, near Myanmar, the broth is often divided into a yin and yang shape—a bubbling, fiery red chili broth on one side, and a cooler white chicken broth on the other.

* In Taiwanese style hot pot, people eat the food with a dipping sauce consisting of sacha sauce and raw egg yolk.

Korea

* Jjigae: Korean steamboats are hot and spicy, perfect for warmth in harsh Korean winters. The ingredients are stewed in a spicy soup flavoured with chili bean paste or salted shrimp paste. Below are some of the most popular varieties.
** Sundubu jjigae: with soft tofu.
** Kimchi jjigae: with kimchi.
** Doenjang jjigae: with doenjang, a fermented soybean paste.
** Budae jjigae ("military base jjigae"): invented back in the earlier years by poor people, who collected leftover food from U.S. military bases such as instant ramen and Spam, and stewed it with kimchi and other ingredients.
* Jeongol
**Gobchang jeongol
**Sinseollo

Thailand

* Thai sukiyaki: Steamboats in Thailand were Chinese-style hot pots at first, catering mainly to Thailand's sizable ethnic Chinese community. However in the 1960s a restaurant chain called Coca Steamboat opened its first branch in Siam Square, Bangkok, offering a modified version of the Chinese hot pot under the Japanese name of "Sukiyaki". (Although it only vaguely resembled Japanese sukiyaki, it was a catchy name for it because of a Japanese pop song called "The Sukiyaki Song" which was a big worldwide hit at the time.) In this modified Thai version, diners had more options of ingredients to choose from, each portion being considerably smaller in order to enable diners to order many more varieties. The spicy dipping sauce was catered for Thai tastes too, with a lot of chili sauce, chilli, lime and coriander leaves added. This proved to be a massive hit, and it was not long before other chains started opening "suki" restaurants across Bangkok and other cities, each with its own special dipping sauce as the selling point. Today the MK chain is the most popular in Thailand with 122 restaurants across the country and eight in Japan. Coca is making a rapid spread abroad too, already serving Thai suki in 24 outlets across Asia and Australia and further outlets planned in the US and Europe.

Comparison to fondue

While not exactly a type of hot pot or "steamboat" fare, the Western dish, fondue, may be compared to the hot pot. Like the hot pot, fondue is also served with a pot and various food that is used to dip in the soup or dipping sauce. The difference namely arise from the utensils that is used (forks vs. chopsticks), and the type of broth, which may be extended to the use of oil and cheese, while steamboat is restricted to water-based broth.

External links

* [http://kyspeaks.com/category/eat/steamboat/ Reviews of many hot pot (steamboat) places in Malaysia]
* [http://www.sinica.edu.tw/tit/dining/0196_HotPot.html Varieties of Hot Pot]
* [http://fantes.com/mongolian_hot_pot.htm History and use]
* [http://www.kinabaloo.com/bj82.html Photos and descriptions of Sichuan and Mongolian HotPot]