Nabe (Japanese Hot Pot) / 鍋 - Sylvia Wakana (2025)

Japanese hot pot is a popular comfort dish during the colder seasons. It’s healthy, easy-to-make, fast, and versatile making it one of my favorite dishes to make on busy days.

Nabe is the overarching word for hot pot dishes in Japan. There are a huge variety of kinds made with all different bases (like dashi or miso) as well as specific kinds like oden or sukiyaki. There are also regional varieties that use ingredients that are specific to the region.

Tools for making nabe

Nabe is most often made in pots made of clay (donabe) or cast iron (tetsunabe). These pots and ingredients are usually placed in the center of dining tables on tabletop stoves and are perfect for sharing with loved ones or friends – it’s a very social type of food. As you are cooking the ingredients in front of you, usually extra uncooked ingredients are off to the side so you can add items as you go to enjoy them freshly cooked and to prevent the veggies from getting soggy or overcooked.

I personally use a donabe to make nabe typically (I have some linked in the “Shop this post” section below as well as on my Tools page) but really you can use any wide pot. I’ve even used my Our Place pan for nabe since it’s quite deep (you can use code “Sylvia10” for $10 off your Our Place order).

If you don’t have a tabletop stove, you can make everything on your range and just take the hot pot off and serve immediately. You just won’t be able to do rounds of ingredients unless you keep going back and forth.

What can I put in nabe?

The nabe recipe I am sharing today is a type of Yosenabe, or a combination nabe that basically has no rules. You can put absolutely anything you want inside. That is one of my favorite things about this kind of nabe. It’s perfect for when you’re trying to clean out your fridge or didn’t have time to go grocery shopping for something specific. Here are some ideas for what you can put in nabe:

• Mushrooms (enoki, shiitake, oyster, etc.)
• Napa Cabbage
• Green Onion or Nira
• Bok Choy
• Carrot
• Thinly cut Pork or Beef
• Chicken
• Fish
• Shrimp
• Clams
• Noodles (shirataki, udon, etc.)
• Tofu
• Fishcake
• Spinach
• Kimchi

And the list can go on and on!

Accompaniments

Lightly flavored nabe are often eaten with dipping sauces like ponzu or sesame sauce. Some nabe with stronger flavors don’t need any sauce as the broth is flavored enough (although I like strong nabe soup for taste and dipping the ingredients in ponzu). Sukiyaki is often dipped into raw beaten egg.

I also like to sprinkle shichimi togarashi (Japanese dried chili spice) or add rayu (hot oil) on top to make my nabe a little spicy.

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