History of Sukiyaki
The dish's name "Sukiyaki" appears in bibliographies around the mid-17th century such as cookbooks. The word “yaki” in “sukiyaki” means grilled, but the word “suki” has many interpretations.
One theory is that the word means "plow," an agricultural tool. People used plowshares instead of pans to grill meat and fish, so the word "suki-yaki" was gradually born.
However, the history of sukiyaki using beef is not very long. Around the 19th century, towards the end of the Edo period, when Japan began to open up to the Western world, most Japanese people did not eat beef. But people started selling beef in butchers and eateries in the expat areas of Yokohama, near Tokyo.
Then, dishes for the Japanese using beef also began to appear. In the city of Kobe, western Japan, a shop selling sukiyaki with beef opened in 1869. At that time the beef was thinly sliced and grilled on a flat-bottomed pan, dipped in sauce when eaten.
This dish then spread to Eastern Japan and became the sukiyaki dish as it is today, using thinly sliced beef, cooked at the table with warishita sauce.
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