Mizutaki Recipe

Mizutaki is a Japanese hot pot, or a light, hearty soup made with boiled chicken. It is cooked in a ceramic pot Donabe, right on the dinner table, and you eat as you cook. Traditionally, chicken skin and chunks of chicken on bone are used in the soup. The word 'mizutaki' means stewed with water, originally the soup was cooked with water with no seasoning, to make the most of the stock derived from chicken and bones. But many restaurants use the chicken stock right from the start, giving the soup a more wholesome flavour. There are many legends associated with Mizutaki, some say it borrows from the local dish Hakata, but experts say that the hot pot of chicken has been in existence since, the Edo period, even though the chicken hot pot grew to popularity in the Meiji period.   Another fascinating legend associated with the origins of Mizutaki takes us to the story of Heizaburo HAYASHIDA, a Nagasaki native, who went to Hong Kong in 1897 when he was fifteen. He lived with an English family, and after he came back to Japan, he blended the Western Consomme and Chinese chicken soup to create the Hakata mizutaki in 1905. Over the years, people have experimented with Mizutaki in many ways, this recipe here combines the goodness of fish and chicken with vegetables that are cooked well with pongo sauce and shrimp.