Hakata Mizutaki
水炊き
Hakata's chicken hot pot in a milky bone broth, eaten course by course with ponzu and yuzukoshō — a Meiji-era dish credited to Hayashida Heizaburō in 1905.
By Japanese Cookbook Kitchen · May 15, 2026
鍋- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 100 min
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Intermediate
Mizutaki is that rare hot pot with a birth certificate. Hayashida Heizaburō, born in the early Meiji years, was sent to Hong Kong at fifteen, worked in households where Western consommé and Cantonese chicken cookery shared a kitchen, and came home with a synthesis: a chicken boiled hard in nothing but water until the broth turned white, served in courses like a Western dinner. He opened Suigetsu in Fukuoka in 1905 to sell it, and the restaurant is still there. It's a neat emblem of Meiji Japan — a port city taking foreign technique and making something that now reads as deeply, obviously Japanese.
The eating has a liturgy. First the broth alone, in a small cup with salt and scallion — no chicken, no vegetables, nothing to distract from what 90 minutes of honest boiling does to a bird. Then the meat and tsukune with ponzu and yuzukoshō; then the vegetables, which the broth seasons; and finally zōsui, rice and egg stirred into what remains, by which point the liquid has collected the whole evening. It asks one thing of the cook — that you boil, not simmer, and trust the cloud. Chicken has rarely been taken this seriously, or repaid it this well.
Salt nothing in the pot. Mizutaki is seasoned at the lips — a pinch of salt in the first cup of broth, ponzu for everything after — and the restraint is what lets a chicken taste enormous.
板前の一言 · A word from the kitchen
Ingredients材料
Serves 4
Broth and chicken
- 1.4 kgbone-in chicken wings, thighs, and backs, chopped through the bone — a whole cut-up chicken is ideal; ask the butcher to chop the pieces so the bones are exposed
- 2 Lwater
- 30 gginger, sliced
- 2negi tops
Tsukune (chicken meatballs)
- 250 gminced chicken thigh
- 1egg yolk
- 1 tspgrated ginger
- 1 tbspkatakuriko (potato starch)
Vegetables and table
- 1/2 headcabbage or hakusai, in large pieces
- 2negi, cut on the bias
- 1 blockmomen tofu, in 8 pieces
- 150 gshiitake or shimeji
- 150 mlponzu
- 2 tspyuzukoshō
- 300 gcooked rice, for the zōsui finish
- 2eggs, for the zōsui finish
Method作り方
Step 1: Boil the chicken white
Blanch the chicken pieces in boiling water for two minutes, rinse, then return to the pot with the 2 litres of fresh water, ginger, and negi tops. Boil — genuinely boil, lid ajar — for 90 minutes, skimming early, until the broth turns ivory and opaque. A simmer gives you a clear Kansai-style broth; Hakata wants the cloud.
Step 2: Mix the tsukune
Work the minced thigh with the yolk, ginger, katakuriko, and a pinch of salt until sticky. Keep it chilled; you'll spoon it into the pot at the table.
Step 3: Serve the first course — just broth
Ladle the plain broth into small cups with a pinch of salt and a few scallion rings. This is how mizutaki begins in Hakata, and it is a small argument for the whole discipline of the dish. Drink it slowly.
Step 4: Poach the meat
Bring the pot to the table on a burner. Return the chicken pieces to the broth, spoon in the tsukune, and simmer until the meatballs float and the meat pulls easily from the bone. Eat both dipped in ponzu with a streak of yuzukoshō.
Step 5: Then the vegetables
Only now add cabbage, negi, tofu, and mushrooms, in waves, so nothing overcooks. The broth keeps deepening as the meal goes — that's the design.
Step 6: Close with zōsui
When the pot is down to broth, stir in the cooked rice, simmer three minutes, and swirl in the beaten eggs off the heat. Season with a little salt and scallions. The zōsui is widely held to be the best course, which says something about how good the broth has become.
道具 · The tools
Equipment
Donabe
土鍋The clay hot-pot that makes nabemono taste like nabemono — a gentle, even simmer that carries straight to the table.
Shop on Amazon →Portable gas burner
カセットコンロThe tabletop butane burner that turns any nabe into a shared meal — cook and eat from the same pot.
Shop on Amazon →Grater (oroshigane)
おろし金Fine, wet grating for ginger, daikon oroshi, and fresh wasabi — a Western microplane is close.
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Questions from the kitchen
Who invented mizutaki?
Unusually for a hot pot, there's a documented name — Hayashida Heizaburō, who spent his youth in Hong Kong, absorbed both Western consommé technique and Chinese chicken cookery, and opened the restaurant Suigetsu in Fukuoka in 1905 to serve the dish. Suigetsu still operates, and still calls the recipe his.
Why is the broth white when it's just chicken and water?
The name means "water-simmered," but the Hakata style boils chopped bones hard enough to emulsify fat and collagen into the liquid — the same mechanics as tonkotsu ramen broth, applied to chicken. The milky color is texture you can see.
Can I use store-bought stock?
No — and for once this isn't purism. The entire dish is the broth; there's no tare, no miso, no soy in the pot to hide behind. Carton stock makes mizutaki into boiled chicken in soup, which is a different and sadder dinner.
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