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Eating healthy doesn’t mean you have to take all the fun out of your dining experience, particularly when this means eating low-calorie but otherwise bland food.

If you’re up for a truly enjoyable and still healthy dining experience, you should try shabu shabu, a Japanese method of cooking using a hot pot. Cook-your-own dining establishments such as this allow you to get only portions that you know you can finish, pick only the food you prefer, and vary your food’s cooking time as you please. Eating at shabu shabu places is also a refreshing new way to bond with friends and family. And for young parents, this is a great way to teach kids to prepare their own meals and make them appreciate nutritious food.

One establishment which offers this is Healthy Shabu Shabu, which has branches in several malls around the metro. I recently got to dine in their Shangri-La Plaza Mall branch when they held a shabu shabu workshop for kids. It was great because I got to appreciate shabu shabu through this experience, and realized that this method does not mean throwing all raw food into a pot of boiling water and stirring them a bit then you’re good to go.

Shabu shabu’s benefits include eating well-balanced, low-cholesterol, nutritious, yet really tasty meals, according to Healthy Shabu Shabu owner Candy Hwang. And even if you’re not such a great cook, you’ll feel a certain rush when you get to prepare your own dishes: it’s always a one-of-a-kind experience eating food you’ve cooked yourself.

Don’t fret if you’re not familiar with the process of do-it-yourself hot pot cooking. For one, Healthy Shabu Shabu uses electric stoves controlled by a remote instead of traditional LPGs. The stove and cords are neatly tucked-away which makes dining in Healthy Shabu Shabu safe enough, even for children. There is also a step-by-step procedure you can follow in preparing shabu shabu. To be equipped you when you try this for yourself, here are steps we learned:

Healthy Shabu Shabu Podium Branch

Step 1. Choose your shabu shabu platter, which includes fresh veggies (Taiwan and Baguio petchay, beancurd, yeam, black mushrooms, carrots), seafood (shrimps, fish fillet, squid, kani), and tender slices of Angus beef and lamb as main options. All options include noodles that come in two types: vermicelli (thin pre-cooked noodles) and egg noodles (flat and white).

You should also prepare the sauce. Healthy Shabu Shabu provides a special barbecue sauce (which looks and smells like shrimp paste or bagoong but tastes differently), chopped garlic, onion, chili, special sauce base, and spices. Mix all these ingredients into the special sauce base; you can opt to add egg yolk into the special sauce to make it richer. This is where you will drop your food after cooking it in the hot pot.

Step 2. Boil the soup base. Technically, this is the first step. The secret of perfecting shabu shabu is learning how to boil the ingredients without overcooking them. In preparing the hot pot, it is important to know which ingredients go in first.

In a vegetable platter, sweet corn and yam have to go first since they have the longest cooking time. You could add a portion of leaf vegetables and beancurd to the soup along with meatballs and tofu, all of which you must not leave boiling for more than 30 seconds. The vegetables are best served crunchy and not overcooked. Then soak the vermicelli noodles in the soup for no longer than 20 seconds. I also tried mixing some of the sauce into the soup to add more taste.

Continue reading the shabu shabu steps on the next page.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Food and Drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.