A hot pot preparation in which thinly sliced beef, tofu, seasonal vegetables (napa cabbage, spring onion, chrysanthemum greens, shiitake), and konnyaku (konjac) are cooked in a sweet soy-based sauce (warishita) at the table in a cast iron pan — each piece dipped in raw beaten egg before eating. Sukiyaki is one of the most celebrated of all Japanese meal formats — simultaneously a social preparation (cooked communally at the table), a precision exercise (the beef cooked to the exact point of doneness in the sweet sauce before the egg dip), and a flavour exercise (the contrast of the sweet-soy sauce, the rich beef, and the raw egg coating).
**Warishita (the sauce):** - Soy sauce: 100ml. - Mirin: 100ml. - Sake: 50ml. - Sugar: 2 tablespoons. Combine. Taste: it should be sweeter than any soy sauce sauce you might use for other preparations — the sweetness is structural to sukiyaki's character. **The Kanto style (Tokyo) vs Kansai style (Osaka):** - Kanto style: the warishita is prepared separately and added to the pan from the beginning. The ingredients cook in the pre-made sauce. - Kansai style: the beef is grilled briefly in the pan before any liquid is added, then sugar and sake are added, then the other liquid components. The sequence changes the flavour slightly — the Kansai-style beef has brief direct-heat colour before the sauce is added. **The beef:** Same as gyudon — very thin, high-quality beef. Sukiyaki traditionally uses premium wagyu or marbled sirloin: the fat content that makes thin beef dry in gyudon is celebrated in sukiyaki, where the fat renders into the sweet warishita sauce during the brief cooking. **The raw egg dip:** Each diner has a small bowl of beaten raw egg. Each piece of cooked beef is removed from the pan, allowed to cool for 5 seconds, and dipped in the raw egg before eating. The heat of the beef very slightly warms the egg on contact — producing a thin, barely-cooked egg coating around the beef. This is the specific texture and flavour element that makes sukiyaki distinctive. Decisive moment: The beef's cooking point in the warishita — 30–45 seconds per side in the simmering sweet soy. The beef should be just cooked through, still slightly pink, tender (the fat has rendered slightly), before removal for the egg dip. Overcooked: the thin slices tighten and lose their tenderness.
Tadashi Ono & Harris Salat, *Japanese Soul Food* (2013)