Shabu Shabu Stir Fry

Not every meal needs to be extravagant. Sometimes, you're feeling lazy. Other times, you simply don't have many ingredients on hand. Maybe you're at a friend's house and their kitchen is ill equipped to suit your culinary needs. That's why, when occurrences such as these happen, it's good to have a go-to plan for cooking. For me, it's stir fry.

One day, my brother brought home some shabu shabu telling me he thought I could do something with it. Insulted, I immediately opened up the package and threw it in his face. Just kidding. I thanked him humbly and scoured the Internet for ideas.

For those of you not in the know, shabu shabu is very thinly sliced beef typically used in Japanese hot pot. I've only had hot pot in China, having never been to Japan. (One day, though!) I enjoyed shabu shabu there, and also in my own kitchen when I've made hot pot myself. However, I was far too lazy to make hot pot, and it was just my brother and I eating. Since I couldn't find any other recipes for it online, I settled on just stir frying it. I was well pleased with the results. Interested in how it turned out? Well then, read on, friend!

Here's what you'll need for this one:

Shabu shabu
Rice
Soy Sauce
Sesame Oil
Sugar
Ginger
Green Onion
White Onion
Shitake Mushrooms
Garlic
Chicken Stock
Mirin (or Cooking Sake)
Butter
Peanut Oil

Start off by getting your rice going. As usual, this is the part that will take the longest. So for maximum efficiency, start it first! Then, assemble your ingredients.

We're actually going to start off with the sauce, this time. Chop up your green onion and mince your garlic. With just a tiny bit of peanut oil, lightly saute. Before the green onions get too cooked, add in a drizzle of sesame oil, and generous amount of soy sauce. Also grate in some fresh ginger. Lightly simmer while stirring and then add in some chicken stock.

Continue to simmer and give it a taste. Now add in sugar until it reaches a nice level of sweetness. Keep the heat as low as you can once you're happy with the flavor. That way, it will stay warm while you do everything else for the meal. If the sauce looks familiar, that's because it's a pretty common Asian style sauce for which you can find many recipes online. There are many variations, and it can also be used cold. It's great for dunking egg rolls or pot stickers.

Now get your other stuff ready. Grab your mushrooms, wash them, and then take off the stems. If you want to get prissy, you can throw the stems away. Or, (for maximum efficiency) you can mince them up really fine. With the delicious caps, simply slice them. Then, dice an onion.

Add a tiny bit of peanut oil to a pan and heat it up. First thing to add into the pan should be the mushroom stems (if you're using them) and the white onion.

Get them sweatin'.

Now add some of that flavorful sauce you made earlier to the mix.

Establishing shot...  

Scooping action...

Get ready for it...

Action shot! (This is difficult to do, so you had better be impressed.)

Now continue to saute until the onions have nice color and the liquid reduces down a bit. You can always add more if you need to. By the way, since the sauce is pretty salty you won't have to add any extra salt as you cook like you usually do.

When it cooks down a bit, you can go ahead and add the sliced shitakes.

Continue to stir fry and get them cooked. Get your shabu shabu ready to go. Once you add it in, you won't need to cook it for long.

Now, just before you add in the meat, you'll want to deglaze with a bit of mirin. It's like sake but really sweet. If any of that Asian sauce you've added is caramelizing and sticking to the pan, this will take care of it, and lend a great flavor both by what it gets off the bottom of the pan, and the mirin itself.

Also don't forget to be liberal with butter. Normally, this is the last step before you take it off the heat, but since the meat is so thinly sliced, it's better to to it now so you don't accidentally over cook it.

Now you're finally ready to add the shabu shabu! Here's where you gotta act fast. (It will be easier for you since you're not taking pictures while cooking.)

After just a minute or two it will look like this, and you know it's ready for eating.

To serve, put it over rice. Then drizzle more sauce on if you need.

I like to sprinkle some parsley on top. To finish it off.

And there you go! An easy and tasty meal that took little effort and even less creativity, yet still was way more interesting than throwing a frozen pizza in the oven.