Japanese Winter Dish – Crab Hot Pot & Porridge

Crab hot pot is a very popular Japanese winter dish. Seasonal seafood and vegetables make a delicious broth, which you can also use to make a rich crab flavored porridge after you’ve eaten the hot pot.

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Hot pot is an easy dish to make that is often eaten in winter. All I need to do is prepare the veggies, broth, and meat / seafood and cook on the dining table as we eat. Among the many kinds of hot pots, crab hot pot is considered one of the most luxurious. I like to use red king crab because they are meaty and full of flavor. 

Recipe for crab hot pot:

I normally use napa cabbage, leek, tofu, asian mushrooms, konnyaku (or shirataki), and raw red king crab legs. You can substitute the veggies to suit your taste or to use up any scrap veggies in your fridge. For example, sometimes I use onions instead of leek or omit konnyaku and asian mushrooms if I cannot find them. Some people use carrots and other leafy veggies but napa cabbage is a must! For this particular crab hot pot recipe, I use the following ingredients:

• Red king crab
• Salmon
• Napa cabbage
• Leek
• Silken tofu
• Shimeji mushrooms
• Konnyaku (shirataki)

1. Make broth

I use natural ingredients to make the broth for this crab hot pot – crab legs, Dashi pack (fish stock pack) and konbu (dried seaweed). Put water, crabs legs, dashi pack, and konbu in a pot, bring to a boil and cook for about 15-20 min. Once cooked, take out the dashi pack and set aside the crab meat. You can leave the konbu in the broth as it can be eaten. No extra salt needed because the crab contains a sufficient amount of salt already. *Make sure you wash off any sand from the crab if you see any.

2. Cut veggies

While making the broth, let’s cut the veggies and tofu. I was taught to cut the napa cabbage using the Sogi giri method – hold the knife at a 20-30 degree angle and slice the cabbage thinly. But I tend to get too lazy to use Sogi giri for each leaf so I start chopping them into 1-2 inch width pieces all at once. Also, cut the white part of the leek into 1 inch pieces and the tofu into 1-2 inch cubes. 

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3. Cook hot pot – first batch

Place the first batch of crab, salmon and other ingredients in to the pot. You don’t need to fit all of each ingredient in at once, just 1/2 or 1/3 of the amount. We usually cook several batches until all the ingredients are gone or we are full. When placing ingredients into the pot, try to layout them out nicely like in the pictures below!

And cook with the lid on for about 15 min or until napa cabbages soften.

4. Serve and eat

I usually cook the hot pot at our dinner table using a portable gas stove or induction heater. But you can always cook it on stove top as I did in the photo above since I didn’t want the little one to touch the pot. 

Ponzu – a citrus seasoned soy sauce – is often eaten with hot pot. You can either dip the veggies and crab in the sauce or pour a little bit into your bowl. Optionally, you can add Ichimi or Shichimi – Japanese hot pepper & spices – if you like a bit of spiciness. Remember not to serve too much of the broth because we want to use it for the other batches and the porridge at the end. 

Do you see the utensil I’m using to take crab meat out of the shell? It’s called a crab spoon/fork! It’s such a useful tool that I always use in Japan when I have crab hot pot!

5. Second and third batch

Before moving onto the next batch, make sure you eat all the veggies and seafood in the pot but keep some seafood for the porridge (about 1 cup). Repeat #3~4 until it’s all gone or everyone is full. 

Keep any leftover broth for the last dish – a crab porridge

After every hot pot meal, I make porridge using the leftover broth. The broth after hot pot is what I call golden soup stock. It’s super rich in flavor from all the seafood and veggies. In Japan, we call this porridge “Shime” – like a closing ritual to our meal.

This is the leftover soup from our hot pot (the photo below). Make sure to save it! This is the golden broth, an important soup base to make our crab porridge.

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Recipe for crab porridge

To make porridge, I use cooked rice, an egg, green onions and about 1 cup of seafood.

First, bring the broth to a boil and add cooked rice & spread evenly. You can use cold rice or even frozen rice. If it’s frozen, cook covered for about 3-5 min under low heat.

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Beat an egg and pour over the rice mixture – this egg works as an extra layer to cook the porridge. The pictures below show how my mom & grandma pour egg onto rice. They use a serving spoon with holes to slowly and evenly spread the egg onto the rice. In this way, I can avoid the egg from clumping together. But if you don’t have this kind of spoon, no big deal. Just gently pour it in.

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Then, top with crab meat & green onions and cook covered for about 5 min under low heat. *If you like the green onions more cooked, feel free to add them into the soup before adding the rice and cook them a little bit more in advance.

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After 5 min… Ta-da! Porridge is done!

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After cooking, serve in individual bowls. Pour about 1/4 tsp of Ponzu & Japanese hot pepper if you like. (I personally like crab porridge without ponzu so that I can enjoy the crab taste more!) Seaweed is a good topping option as well.

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It’s best to eat right after it’s cooked but if you would like to save some for later, rice will gradually absorb the soup and the porridge will get clumpy. In that case, mix in some water when reheating.

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Interested in other Japanese food?

• See also Japanese new year’s mochi soup, too!