Basic Grilling with the water grill, Mizu Konro

Ingredients

Your choice of vegetables, mushrooms, seafood, and/ or meat. You can simply cut them to grill, marinade, or season with salt and pepper. It’s your choice.

Examples:

(Vegetables)

• Asparagus
• Bell peppers
• Shishito peppers
• Zucchini
• Okra
• Sweet potato

(Seafood)

• Shrimp
• Scallop
• Boiled octopus
• Squid
• Salmon

(Meat)

• Steak
• Pork belly slice
• Chicken thigh

(Other ingredients)

• Mushrooms
• Mochi

 

(Condiments/ Dipping Sauce Suggestions)

• Nao-Jan
• Moshio sea salt, wasabi, and sesame oil combo
• Garlic butter and Crystalized shoyu combo
• Soy sauce and lemon wedges (to squeeze) combo

Procedure

(Lighting binchotan charcoal)

Put some binchotan charcoal in a charcoal starter (make sure not to get the starter too full), and set over  medium to medium-low heat. If the charcoal piece is too large to fit, you can break it. The amount of charcoal you need can vary depending on how much you want to cook in the grill. For a full meal among 4 – 5 people, we normally use about 2/3 bag of the binchotan.

Heat until binchotan pieces are lit (it normally takes 15 – 30 minutes depending on the size of binchotan). Rotate the pieces sometimes, meanwhile.

*Binchotan might pop during heating, so be careful and try not to move your face too close to the starter.

*Always make sure the heat is medium or lower. High heat is more likely to cause popping of binchotan or binchotan may contain pockets of air that could burst.

*Make sure to light binchotan in a well ventilated area when lighting indoor stove. Never use portable (table-top) burner, as its fuel canister could get too hot from the heat from binchotan and cause danger.

Set the Mizu Konro – fill the base bowl with enough water, and set the insert over the bowl. Transfer the lit binchotan into the insert. Place the grill top. Now, Mizu Konro is ready!

 

(Setting up the table)

Time to grill your choice of ingredients. Make sure you have everything ready at the table.

 

(Getting condiments/ dipping sauces ready)

I always like to have a few kinds of condiments/ dipping sauces so you can enjoy a variety of flavor combinations. One of very easy and very good dipping sauces is moshio sea salt + wasabi paste + sesame oil (black sesame or golden sesame, depending on how you feel like) combo. You simply combine them in a dipping saucer and lightly mix with chopsticks.

And, always, Nao-Jan.

We also had garlic butter (combination of softened butter and finely-grated garlic) with Crystalized Shoyu, and fine soy sauce with lemon wedges (so you can simply drizzle some soy sauce and squeeze lemon juice over grilled ingredients to enjoy).

We got beef trip tip, chicken thigh, large shrimp, boiled octopus, asparagus, shishito peppers, and shiitake mushrooms to grill. None of them were marinated or seasoned, because we like to enjoy different dipping/ condiments. But, you can marinate ingredients also, if you like.

Side dish of enoki mushroom and nira (garlic chives) namul (Korean-style salad).

(Grilling and dining)

We always like to keep grilling, eating, laughing, and having so much fun until we are very full.

Happy donabe life.