Tenjin Nabe Mizutaki Hakata Chicken Collagen Hot Pot

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg chicken pieces — thigh, drumstick, and wing sections, bone-in, skin-on
• 1.5 litres cold water, for the broth, plain and unseasoned
• 10 g kombu
• 200 g Chinese cabbage (hakusai), roughly cut
• 100 g mitsuba, stems and leaves separated
• 100 g fu (wheat gluten)
• 300 g silken tofu, cut into large cubes
• For the ponzu dipping sauce
• 120 ml ponzu
• 100 g daikon, finely grated
• 50 g negi (Japanese long onion), finely sliced into rounds
• 60 g momiji-oroshi, grated daikon with chili — the characteristic Hakata garnish
• For the zosui finish
• 200 g cooked short-grain rice, rinsed

Method

1. 1
   Place the chicken pieces in a pot, cover with cold water, and bring to a full boil. Boil for two minutes, then drain and discard the blanching water. Rinse the chicken under cold running water. The flesh should be firm and the skin pale and clean.
2. 2
   Transfer the blanched chicken to a donabe or heavy clay pot. Add 1.5 litres of fresh cold water and the kombu. Bring to a vigorous rolling boil over high heat. Remove the kombu once the water reaches boiling. The water should begin to turn faintly opaque within the first five minutes.
3. 3
   Maintain the vigorous rolling boil — not a gentle simmer — throughout. This is where the dish lives or dies: only a sustained, agitated boil emulsifies collagen from bone marrow and skin into the broth, converting it from clear water to a milky-white, gelatinous stock. A gentle simmer produces a clear broth and cannot be corrected. Cook at this intensity for 30 to 40 minutes. The broth is ready when it is visibly opaque and white, and carries a clean, deeply sweet chicken scent.
4. 4
   Ladle the milky broth into small cups and serve immediately as the first course — the Hakata sequence requires the broth to be drunk before anything else is eaten. Season each cup at the table with a small pinch of salt only. The broth should be remarkably sweet, round, and gelatinous on the lips.
5. 5
   While the broth is being drunk, set the ponzu dipping sauce at the table: divide the ponzu among individual bowls and allow each diner to add grated daikon, negi rounds, and momiji-oroshi to taste.
6. 6
   Return the pot to the table over a portable burner. Diners lift chicken pieces from the broth and dip them into the ponzu sauce to season at the point of eating. The chicken is done when it yields easily from the bone and the meat pulls clean.
7. 7
   Add tofu, Chinese cabbage, mitsuba, and fu to the pot in the final ten minutes of eating. These ingredients absorb the collagen broth deeply. The Chinese cabbage is ready when it has softened fully and turned translucent at the edges; the mitsuba leaves are added last and need only thirty seconds.
8. 8
   To close the meal, add rinsed cooked rice to the remaining broth and bring to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally, until the rice is soft and has absorbed the broth into a loose porridge (zosui). The surface should appear starchy and the scent intensely of chicken collagen. This is the canonical end of a mizutaki meal.