Taiwan is famous for its wide variety of hot pots, including those with flavors borrowed from other Asian countries such as Korea and Thailand, but the Japanese also love this delicious cuisine. In that populous nation, hot pots are known generally as nabemono.

The term is a mixture of two words: nabe, which refers to a wide type of cooking pot, and mono, a Japanese word that simply means “things” or “stuff” in English. As anyone who has ever had the pleasure of eating hot pot knows, that “stuff” means food, and lots of it. And there's not just one way to go about trying it out. Here are five tasty versions worth eating.

Shabu-Shabu

　　Many types of hot pots exist, but one of the most popular in Taiwan and Japan is called shabu-shabu, which is said to have been created in Osaka in the 1950s. Featuring thinly sliced cuts of beef (the most common ingredient), pork, chicken, other meat or fish, and vegetables, the dish got its name from the sound of the meat in the bubbling broth, as “shabu” indicates a swishing sound.

It differs from other Japanese meals because it is eaten bit by bit as food cooks in the boiling broth rather than everything being served together as a cooked meal. The meat is typically dipped in a sauce such as ponzu, a kind of soy sauce with a citrus flavor.

Sukiyaki

　　Sukiyaki is sweeter than shabu-shabu because the food is cooked in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and rice wine. In this famous dish, thinly sliced meat—usually beef—is cooked slowly in a shallow iron pot along with vegetables.

After being cooked, the food is usually dipped in a bowl of raw eggs and then eaten. Like shabu-shabu, sukiyaki is often enjoyed with others around a table and frequently served at year-end parties.