Marathon eating: Shabu Shabu

Hmmmmmmm!

As you all know we LOVE food and we write about Korean food often always claiming our next entry to be the best food yet. And today is no different; there is another dish that deserves to be added to the best list.

Not only is this food incredible delicious but it also healthy and inexpensive! Yip,  you heard me! People are constantly weighing their options...do we go here? No it's expensive. Do we go here? No, it's not healthy. Do we go here? No thanks, I'm not a big fan. Most Korean food is healthy, delicious and inexpensive, but I will explain to you why Shabu Shabu is even more worth your while.

There are many different types of Shabu Shabu, including seafood, ribs and beef. Beef is our favourite; it is not everyday in Korea that you get an inexpensive meal with beef in it. We are used to beef being very cheap back home so we would eat it quite regularly. For 300g of mincemeat in South Africa you would pay approximately R30 (just over 3USD) but for the same thing in Korea you will pay roughly 40,000Won (34USD). It is crazy! So the moral of the story is, we don't get to eat a lot of beef which is another reason why Shaby Shabu rocks.

I am getting ahead of myself, I will get back to the beef a little later. Like any good Shabu Shabu, it starts with the vegetables! Yummy!

The burner, the broth comes on

You get a big broth to boil on you table and you slowly add a cocktail of different vegetables to the broth, which include: cabbage, other green leaves, mushrooms, and some fish cakes (not a vegetable I know but it goes in the same time as the veggies). Then you start to eat away at the vegetables dipping them into some or other scrumptious sauce on your table. You have a couple of spoons of the broth, with is absolutely yummy and then you start adding the meat.

Shabu Shabu has very thin slices of meat because it cooks in a matter of seconds once added to the broth. So you add the meat and what you have left of the vegetable, turn down the heat so that you have a low simmer going, and continue to stuff your face full of wholesome goodness!

Once the meat is gone, which with our carnivorous appetites is quite quickly, the broth has thickened somewhat and is ready for you to add the noodles. So now the broth has added flavour from all of the meat and vegetables that it makes these noodles amazing! Turn up the heat, and soon it will be time to eat again!

Throw some of the noodles into your bowl! Add some of the yummy sauce (Oliver is a big fan of doing this) and chow down!

Now in some Shabu Shabu places this might mark the end of your culinary experience (like the one we are showing photos of) but in others (like our favourite spot introduced to us by a good friend but where we did not have a camera handy) the meal continues. By now, your stomach is reaching proximity but you just can't help but push on!

The next stage requires you to add some rice and egg to the now boiled down broth. You give it a couple of minutes to figure itself out and by then you would have given your tummy some time to breathe! It ends up being a delicious rice porridge...my favourite part of the meal (even more so than the meat). If you are really lucky you will also be served a delicious cinnamon drink to finish off the meal.

So Shabu Shabu is no ordinary meal, it is a marathon of eating which is also healthy and cheap.....how cheap? On average you can eat Shabu Shabu for about 8000Won (Just under 7USD).

A damn good deal if you ask me!

Ppost by Claudia