Jingisukan... A Recipe for Lamb Heaven

Well today I am going to write about one of my all time favourite subjects. Jingisukan. The what now?... Well, Jingisukan is a dish based broadly on Mongolian BBQ style cooking. And if you're wondering where the name came from... just think of perhaps the most famous of all Mongolians... Ghengis Khan. It's all over Japan, but from what I understand it's particularly popular in Sapporo, my wife's home city - in the northern island of Hokkaido.

Now I should warn you before we go any further... the following post is for those that loooove meat (lamb in particular) and contains photos of above mentioned meat in all it's glorious meatiness. Anyone squeamish about meat (or have any relationship with sheep - no New Zealanders reading this? - now might be a the time to skip to another post).

I should say at the outset that this is a recipe handed down with some trepidation by T-chan... after all, this is otousan's super-secret recipe for Jingisukan... I'm not sure it's really been passed down generation after generation, but I have to say it's one of our treasures.

Here's the ingrediant list - noting that this should most probably feed 2 - 3 people (but it is hard to gauge as T-chan and I can and have eaten enough food for 3-4 people ourselves when it comes to Jingisukan):

Marinade:

1/3 Onion finely chopped

1/2 Apple - grated

1 clove Garlic - finely chopped

1 tsp Ginger - little grated

Spring Onion (to taste)

salt and paper

7tbs Soy Sauce  

3 tbs Sake

2 tsp Sugar

(note - this recipe is for 500 gm of lamb, increase quantities based on meat... as an example for 4-5 people we'd order 1.5-2kg of lamb, but might have some left over which you can freeze prior to cooking)

The main ingredient...not surprisingly, is meat. Lamb to be precise. Now typically, from our experience, the meat in Jingisukan are large slices of mutton, maybe 2 mm thick. I'm not sure about how easy it is to get mutton these days (mutton is an older female or castrated male sheep... er... maybe more info than you needed). The reality is that you can try different types of sheep, and different thicknesses of cut, depending on what's available. Today we had a choice of three different styles.

In this case we mixed the thinly sliced lamb with some Lamb backstraps that T-chan cut by hand. It's a messy job, but you just gotta keep the end product in mind. Now the thing to remember here is that this needs to marinate over night... so this is not a dish for the spur of the moment.

Mixing the marinade ingredients together, you simply cover and refrigerate over night.

To show that we believe in a balanced diet, Jingisukan also includes vegetables - and the choice is largely up to personal taste. We sliced up potato, pumpkin, eggplant, capsicum (green bell peppers), bean sprouts, onion and garlic chives. Asparagus is also nice. These can be prepared just prior to cooking... in the case of the potato and pumpkin, we pre-cooked (boiled) ever so slightly.

And of course - you couldn't really appreciate Jingisukan fully without a good beer, and the best beer (in my humble-married-to-a-Sapporo-girl view) is Sapporo Beer. I love it... how could I not. The ironic thing is that whilst it is indeed IMPORTED; it's imported from Canada - NOT Japan. Globalisation. It's a wonderful thing. Still, thank you Canada for supplying my Sapporo Beer requirements.

The other important ingredients are: table cooker and Jingisukan hat. Jingisukan is very much a social meal. You cook it as you eat it, with everyone sharing cooking duties at the dining table. Now any old gas camper cooker will do... just make sure that you've got a nice thick table cloth (that is easily cleaned). Jingisukan can be a little messy. The Jingisukan hat (named supposedly after the helmets that legend tells were used to cook the BBQ), is perhaps the hardest part to get. We bought and carried ours back from Sapporo... but if you look around Chinese/Asian grocers, often you can pick up something very similar. The thing is that the hat is quite thick (and heavy) so the heat is distributed thoroughly. The shape is critical... in proper Jingisukan you use lard (hmmm fat) that runs down and collects on the sides... this is used to cook the vegetables. 

We went all healthy (yeah... right) and used oil instead... relying on the fat content within the meat itself to provide the necessary cooking juices. For that reason, it's good to start off with the fatty meat first.

Once you've got up a good head of steam on the cooker (i.e. a bit of fat collecting), just start adding more meat and vegetables. The meat takes a few minutes to cook, and that gives you time to do some... hmm... sampling of the good ol' Canadian Sapporo beer. Yum. 

Now the one thing that I should warn you of... DO NOT wear your best suit and evening dress whilst eating Jingisukan. It's messy, it's fatty, and it most definitely is smelly. Expect to be smelling BBQ'd lamb for the next day afterwards.... for me this is a bonus (ah... Baaaa Beeee Quuuuuu goodness.....hmmmm)... but for some people, they may find their house smelling of meat to be a less than desirable thing.

But the thing to do is enjoy the moment. Make sure to invite some friends over (the best way to enjoy Jingisukan) and make an evening of it. Don't be surprised if you just keep eating into the night until your belly threatens to explode in a shower of lamb delight (ok... delight may not be the sensation experienced when your stomach explodes, and most probably won't describe the feeling of those cleaning up the mess from the walls afterwards). It's a fun AND heart-warming way to eat... and it's very, very Hokkaido-esque.

Last note - as the evening of cooking gets on, you may need to periodically clean the cooking hat of the bits and pieces that end up being left behind (and which will start to look just a little too well done before long). If you're up to it, these crunchy bits can be tasty (just as long as they're not more charcoal than food).

Please - if you try this recipe, write back and let us know how it went. This is our family recipe, and I'm sure my wife T-chan would appreciate your thanks for sharing. Thanks T-chan... and arigatou otousan!

In an effort to cross promote... check out how they do Jingisukan for real in the Sapporo Beer Garden on my other blog, Japanese Ties.