Japanese art of donabe
Inside the kitchen of Yuzuki Japanese Eatery in San Francisco, chef Miyuki Hasegawa measured out a portion of presoaked rice into a bulbous, black-glazed clay pot. She added dashi, mirin, soy and ginger then carefully layered thin slices of salmon on top. Next, she covered the dish and put it over a low flame until the fish was cooked through and the rice was tender, with a golden, crisp edge where it touched the pot.
This is donabe cooking. The donabe is a clay pot that has been used in Japan for centuries, especially at home. It delivers heat slowly, enhancing flavor in the simplest dishes, and works as a beautiful serving vessel at the table.
“I thought it would be good to focus on something that we actually eat at home and is popular in the culture but that wasn’t so known in the U.S,” says Naoko Takei Moore of her decision to start importing donabe into the United States in 2008. In 2015, she co-authored a donabe cookbook — simply titled “Donabe” — with Kyle Connaughton, who will be using the pots at his forthcoming Healdsburg restaurant, Single Thread. At the time, Takei Moore noticed that many Americans were becoming interested in Japanese cooking but only knew about restaurant foods like sushi and tempura.
“Donabe is good at maintaining the nutrients of the ingredients, and you can make simple cooking taste good,” she says.
You could call donabe the ancient version of the electric hot pot cooker or Crock-Pot, without the plug. Add chopped vegetables, protein and broth, put them on the stove and let them bubble away. They inspire one-pot meals — miso hot pot with ramen, simmered meat stews, shabu-shabu — and retain heat well, so the food stays warm at the table. You can also cook in them table side over a propane burner, and there are modern double-walled and double-lidded versions for rice, like the one that Hasegawa uses, tagine-style ones for steaming and donabe smokers.
The best donabe, Takei Moore says, are made in Iga, a region southwest of Tokyo that also happens to be the birthplace of the original ninja warriors. It sits on a historic lake bed with clay that is full of fossilized microorganisms that burn up completely in a 2,000degree kiln, leaving tiny holes that make the clay porous.
Those “tiny negative spaces,” as Takei Moore calls them, help with heat retention while also cooking foods very delicately. “The heat distribution is very gentle,” she says.
Like many novices, I was afraid of turning up the gas too quickly under a borrowed donabe when I made Takei Moore’s Sun-Dried Mushroom & Tofu Hot Pot. She reminded me that the pots were originally designed to go over an open fire (an electric burner won’t distribute the heat correctly, she cautions), and have been put through a kiln twice. But even when I slowly increased the heat, there was no violent bubbling, just tickles of evaporation around the edges. The vegan broth, seasoned sparely with kombu and sun-dried mushrooms, seemed to build its rounded flavor in the low simmer and steam.
The downside of cooking with donabe is the initial investment. Because each one is shaped and fired by hand, they start at around $65 and go up to $180 for a medium rice cooker (I already put one on my holiday wish list). It’s the kind of kitchen tool you’ll want to make a habit of using, but you can start with a basic one for many different types of preparations.
Plus, the intangibles of cooking in a glazed clay pot quickly transcend the experience of plugging an appliance into a wall.
“Cooking in donabe is a special feeling because it has the history, and also it comes from earth,” says Takei Moore. “You live in the earth, so you kind of have a special connection.”
“Donabe: Classic and Modern Clay Pot Cooking” (Ten Speed Press, 2015), by Naoko Takei Moore and Kyle Connaughton. Donabe are sold at Toirokitchen.com and Healdsburg Shed.
Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan