Jingisukan

Lamb grilled on a domed pan with the vegetables in the trough catching everything that runs down.

Lamb. Not vegetarian — contains lamb.

Ingredients

the sauce

6 tablespoons soy sauce
4 tablespoons mirin
2 tablespoons sake
1 apple, grated
1 onion, grated
20 g ginger, grated
4 garlic cloves, grated
2 tablespoons sugar

the pan

700 g lamb shoulder, thinly sliced
1 onion, in thick rings
300 g beansprouts
200 g cabbage, in pieces
1 green pepper, in rings
100 g lamb fat, for greasing

Method

THE DOMED PAN IS THE RECIPE, and it is the same idea as the mu kratha on this site with the opposite geometry: meat on the summit, vegetables in the trough around the rim, and everything the lamb gives up runs DOWN into them. On a flat pan the vegetables fry in their own water and the fat stays with the meat.
RUB THE DOME WITH LAMB FAT and keep doing it. A dry dome tears the first slice that touches it.
Sauce: everything blended and rested at least 2 hours. The grated apple and onion are enzymatic as well as sweet and they tenderise the lamb.
TWO WAYS ROUND AND BOTH ARE CORRECT: marinate the lamb in the sauce beforehand, or grill it plain and dip. Marinated burns faster because of the sugar; dipped keeps the lamb's own flavour clearer. Marinate half.
Get the pan properly hot before anything goes on.
Vegetables into the trough first, so they are already cooking when the fat starts to arrive.
Lamb on the dome, a few slices at a time. 1 to 2 minutes a side -- thin lamb is done fast and goes grey and tough if left.
Do not crowd the dome. Crowded, it drops the heat and the lamb boils in its own juice rather than searing.
Keep the vegetables moving in the trough so they do not scorch where the fat pools.
Eat in rounds as it cooks rather than plating it all at once.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Japan · All recipes