Donabe

A lidded earthenware pot: nabe, rice, and winter meals that stay on the table while they cook.

Also called 土鍋, clay donabe · From Japan

A glazed donabe of nabe broth with napa cabbage, tofu, and a ladle on a wooden table.

The journey

Donabe means earthen pot. Japanese winter tables still set one over a burner: broth, vegetables, tofu, and meat added as people eat. A second donabe cooks rice with a crust. The pot is the stove and the serving dish.

A metal pot rushes the broth. Clay keeps it at a murmur.

A woodblock of an East Asian hearth — the fire a donabe still sits over in winter. — Anonymous Chinese nianhua of the Kitchen God (Zao Jun), public-domain woodblock · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Do not dry-heat an empty donabe. Build the broth, then the vegetables, then the protein. Eat from the pot. Finish with rice or noodles in the last liquid.

The Japanese volume's nabe and rice pages assume this clay. The wok stays the weekday toss; this is the winter hearth.

Used in these ComidaTime kitchens

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