Sesame Miso Donabe

The weather is quickly warming up for Southern California but it's been difficult to stop making this sesame miso donabe! IT'S SO GOOD. We started making it when COVID-19 shut the entire world down and we ordered a CSA box to help some local farms who had lost their restaurant contracts stay afloat. The leafy greens were perfect in donabe.

That box was $25, which is a steal for how fresh the vegetables are! When I buy greens from the market, they usually last about a week. One of those Bloomsdale spinach bundles lasted THREE WEEKS before I got to it and it wasn't rotting at all!

This donabe (or you can make it in a regular pot) is totally adaptable with whatever vegetables or thin-sliced meat you have on hand (or seafood). Most of the time when I've made this, it's been totally vegetarian because it was the easiest, and we wanted to use as much of the CSA vegetables as possible. The most important thing is the soup base.

Sesame Miso Donabe
Adapted from Just One Cookbook
Serves 4

3 Tbsp white sesame seeds
6 cups water
1 Tbsp Hon-dashi
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 dried shitake mushrooms
3-4 Tbsp miso paste

Vegetable suggestions:
Spinach
Bok choy
Tokyo turnips
Daikon
Green onions
Assorted mushrooms
Tofu, fish (cut into 1" chunks), shrimp, any shabu shabu meats

Toast the white sesame seeds in a small pan over low heat (no oil or anything required). Make sure it doesn't burn! Grind with a mortar and pestle, not too fine.

Boil the water with the Hon-dashi, garlic and dried mushrooms. Add the tofu and hard vegetables (daikon, carrots, turnips, etc), simmer for 5 minutes. Add leafy greens and quicker cooking vegetables (green onions, mushrooms, spinach, etc), simmer for two minutes.

At this point you can serve hot with ponzu sauce as an option. If you have any seafood/meats, add them now and simmer for three minutes, then serve. The seafood/meats will continue to cook in the hot broth.