Christmas Eve Meal: Homemade Sukiyaki, and Life Chat with Friends
How to spend your Christmas Eve when you have no family around but want to eat a big meal?
2023.12.25, this is the third Christmas I’ve experienced in the US. As Chinese, we don’t treat Christmas as a family reunion day or a religious festival, going out to big shopping centers with friends and feeling the Christmas vibe, is usually how we spend Christmas. After I came to the US, I realized no place was open on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so going to friends’ places or hosting a party with friends became the only choice to spend my Christmas Eve.
The perfect meal for me at this time is typically a homemade hotpot, which I love to enjoy with my friends. We all collaborate to prepare the ingredients, cook the food, and add it to the soup base. It's a simple but tasty meal that emphasizes teamwork and friendship. Unlike regular meals, when we eat hotpot, we can take our time and keep the eating going for more than two hours. With the heat source always on, there's no need to worry about the food getting cold.
This Christmas, we opted for Japanese Sukiyaki instead of Chinese spicy hotpot. Sukiyaki highlights the original flavors and freshness of the ingredients, providing warmth and tenderness during the winter season, which I feel will be the perfect fit for Christmas.
What is Sukiyaki?
Sukiyaki is a Japanese-style hot pot with several key ingredients including mushrooms, tofu, fatty beef, and Udon noodles, and served with Sukiyaki sauce and raw egg yolks.
Japanese restaurants usually use beaten eggs to dip the beef in, but it’s not a must since beef has already tasted good with the hotpot sauce. Also, it’s not recommended because of the increased risk of foodborne illness from undercooked eggs.
Sukiyaki is usually cooked at the table before and while eating, we usually use a portable electric gas burner or a specialized electrical plug-in hot pot.
Ingredients for 4 people
Vegetables:
Firm Tofu x 1
Potato x 1
Bean Sprouts x 1 bundle
Corns x 4
Chinese Cabbage x 1 bundle
Fried Bean Curd Puff x 1 bag
Shiitake Mushroom x 1 bundle
Needle Mushroom x 1 bundle
Tofu Skin x 1
Meat:
Sliced Mutton 2.5 lb
Meatballs, like squid balls, shrimp meatballs, beef meatballs, pork meatballs, etc. 2lb
Spam x 1 can
Sliced Fatty Beef 1.5 lb
Beef Tongue 1 lb
Main Dish:
Potato Noodles
Sauces:
Sukiyaki Sauce
How to cook?
step 1: Pan fry firm tofu after cutting it into long thin pieces, then remove from the pan and set aside.
step 2: Add the sliced fatty beef to the pot, sear for 10 seconds, then add 1 tbsp of Sukiyaki sauce, pan fry the sliced beef until slightly brown, then remove them from the pan and set aside.
step 3: Add 3 tbsp of Sukiyaki sauce, then add water to broil.
step 4: Add ingredients to the pot in sections, eg: firm tofu section 1, Chinese cabbage section 2, corns section 3, Shiitake mushrooms section 4, meatballs section 5, spam section 6, sliced mutton and baby bean sprouts in the middle. Then pour the rest of Sukiyaki sauce (leave 3 tbsp for the remaining ingredients)
