Naoko Takei Moore Wants You to Live a Happy Donabe Life

Naoko Takei Moore has beautiful memories of her mother’s Japanese home cooking. Growing up in Tokyo in the ’80s, she savored those moments when she and her mom stood side by side in the kitchen making fresh onigiri and mochi, and, most of all, when they’d sit around the family table to enjoy a meal of yose-nabe, a kind of hot pot made with simple ingredients like clams, fish and whatever vegetables they had on hand — all cooked in the traditional Japanese clay pot known as donabe.

The best part, she says, was when they’d lift the lid of the pot to reveal the finished dish, and all of the steam wafted up. “It’s so special,” she says. “It never gets old.”

In the introduction to her new cookbook, Simply Donabe, Takei Moore recalls how years later, after she’d immigrated to Los Angeles, she found herself wanting to share traditional donabe with her new community in the United States. In 2008, she founded TOIRO, a company that sold handmade donabe imported from Iga, Japan, and started hosting donabe-centric Japanese cooking classes in her home.

Before she knew it, she’d become donabe culture’s number one evangelist in the Western world, co-authoring her first award-winning cookbook on the topic (Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking) in 2015, and expanding her business to include a brick-and-mortar donabe shop in West Hollywood. She’s also become a minor celebrity on Instagram, where she goes by “Mrs. Donabe” and has more than 47,000 followers who marvel over her gorgeously presented one-pot dishes.

These days, she says, donabe cooking has become mainstream in ways she never could have imagined when she first started teaching her little grassroots cooking classes, when most of her students couldn’t even pronounce the word. (It’s “doh-nah-bay,” not “doh-nah-bee.”) Now, magazines like Food & Wine and Bon Appétit will reference “donabe” in recipes without feeling the need to translate the word as “Japanese clay pot,” and TOIRO routinely gets orders from customers across the U.S. and in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

But Takei Moore says the gospel she’s spreading isn’t really about any particular recipe or cooking technique. Instead, she believes using donabe in day-to-day cooking is a pathway toward a slower, more intentional and more idyllic life — what she calls her “happy donabe life.”

On the eve of a book tour visit to San Francisco that will include a talk at Omnivore Books on Food and a special dinner at Rintaro, I spoke to Takei Moore about the connective power of food and the life-changing, near-magical qualities of her beloved donabe.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Luke Tsai: Can you briefly explain what a donabe is for those who don’t know?

Naoko Takei Moore: It literally means clay pot — “do” means clay, and “nabe” means pot. It’s the foundation of Japanese cuisine, going back more than 10,000 years during the Jōmon Period. So it’s almost like donabe is a national cookware for Japanese people; it’s so close to everybody’s heart. Almost every household owns at least one. It can be something very inexpensive and mass-produced, or, or you can invest in something a little bit more artisan — the super-premium style can go up to $1,000 or $2,000. But most donabe are very affordable and approachable, and if you use it properly, it can last for a long, long time.

In the introduction to your book, you talk about how donabe isn’t just a cooking tool; it’s a “way of life” — and a way for a person to have a happy life. Can you elaborate on how that’s the case?

Ultimately, it’s a lifestyle, and it really symbolizes Japanese communal dining. In Japanese conversation, when we say “nabe,” it refers to a hot pot dish, but it also means “let’s get together.” Instead of saying “let’s get together,” we might say, “Let’s nabe sometime.”

When you make hot pot in a donabe, you set up a tabletop burner in the center of the table, put the donabe there, add all the ingredients, and then you cook. Everybody gets to participate: Someone is in charge of the main cooking, but you might ask, “Can you pass that? Can you stir?” It’s really not about the vessel itself or the recipes, but it’s more about how donabe plays a role in communication and connecting people.

And because donabe is essentially just a bowl and a lid, there’s always this time when the dish is done, so let’s reveal. That’s when everybody’s eyes just focus on the lid. And the joy when the donabe lid is lifted, that’s really so special.

It’s really not about the finished dish, it’s the process of the entire meal.

A lot of American home cooks already have too many pots and pans and might feel like it’s too much to buy this kind of specialized cooking vessel. What do you say to those people when convincing them to give donabe cooking a try?

First of all, I completely understand. [laughs] I promote the spirit of donabe cooking — if you want to use different kinds of pots, that’s totally fine. But I have seen so many people who are like that who say, “Ok, I’ll give it a try,” and buy a basic, medium-size donabe. Then they come back and say, your donabe changed my life and changed my family’s life. They talk about how the donabe is so beautiful to look at and how, when it’s at the center of the table, it just connects people. It becomes their Sunday ritual.

Also, people comment that when cooking in donabe, somehow the food magically tastes better. And that has been proven scientifically, because donabe is made of porous clay. It takes more time to build the heat, and once it gets hot, it stays hot for a long time. So if you’re making a braised dish or a stew or soup, when the pot cools down very slowly, that’s how you develop multiple layers of flavors.

Is there one recipe in particular that you suggest that people try cooking in order to convince them of the “donabe way”?

That’s hard because all the recipes are so personal to me! But probably miso soup or a hot pot dish. Soup is so essential in my life because it calms me and slows me down. Also, rice tastes so good when you cook it in the donabe.

What about the versatility of donabe? Can you use it for cooking dishes that are completely non-Japanese?

I love making curry in the donabe. And orange saffron rice, which is inspired by Persian cuisine.

Again, donabe is not about the recipes; it’s really about the spirit of the cooking. Braising is part of every culture. Recently, I made a Mediterranean-style chickpea and lamb stew with tomato sauce that was really brilliant. And one time, a customer in Norway made a reindeer stew in the donabe and sent me a photo. It looked absolutely delicious.

Simply Donabe is available wherever books are sold. Takei Moore will be in conversation with food journalist Lauren Saria at Omnivore Books on Food (3885a Cesar Chavez St., San Francisco) on Feb. 24 at 6:30 p.m. The event is free to attend, but space is limited. Takei Moore will also help the chefs at Rintaro prepare a special a la carte donabe menu based on her recipes on Feb. 25.  As of publication time, only a few reservations are still available.