With all of our recent quarantine fun, we’ve been trying to come up with ways to keep ourselves entertained. Recently, we’ve started coming up with theme nights and unique dinner ideas. Last week, we decided to have a Hibachi night at home. My husband has been asking to do this for weeks, and we finally made it happen.
Now, a traditional Hibachi training course takes six months to learn to do it properly. We spent about six minutes watching a Youtube video on how to make an onion volcano. So needless to say, this is not a traditional Hibachi, but it was a very fun night.
If you want to host your own Hibachi night at home, here’s how to do it!
First, plan the menu. You can keep it simple! Stick with fried rice, vegetables, a protein and some fun sauces. If you want to take the extra step, you can make miso soup as an appetizer while your guests are entertained by the Hibachi grill.
For vegetables, I recommend mushrooms, zucchini, onions, broccoli and carrots. Use soy sauce, garlic butter (or regular butter in a pinch), teriyaki sauce, and salt and pepper to cook on your grill. If you are using a pan on the stove, medium heat should do the trick. Also, the perfect time for an onion volcano is right before you cook the vegetables.
When selecting your proteins, try to give options. Think about using chicken, steak and shrimp. If it’s a fun date night, you can pick what you want to eat that night. When entertaining a group, options are nice. We just used chicken and shrimp for our hibachi night.
Fried rice is a must for hibachi night. You can go ahead and cook your rice either in a rice cooker or in a pot. The fry it up on the grill. Use garlic butter, teriyaki, soy sauce, salt and pepper. You can do a flair of dramatics here with a few fried eggs.
To take it over the edge, you can make Yum Yum Sauce! Combine mayonnaise, ketchup, paprika, cayenne pepper, sugar, melted butter and garlic powder. You can also buy Yum Yum sauce at the grocery store. Ours was out of stock so I made my own.
Next, set up your atmosphere. In order to give the illusion of hibachi night you can use an electric griddle if you want to get fancy and entertain in front of a group, but a regular pan is fine. You can also use an outdoor griddle top if you have one and make it an outdoor hibachi night. Set up place settings around the grill so people can sit and watch at the same time. Use ramekins for sauce. If you have a squirt bottle, then you can offer people Yum Yum sauce like they do at the restaurants.
To take your night to the next level, you can make an entire show out of the theme night. Make a cart to roll your ingredients in. You can use a bar cart if you have one or even a wagon. We used a car creeper with several moving boxes on top covered with a white tablecloth. Also, make a chef’s hat. You can either purchase one on Amazon or tape/staple together pieces of printer paper. Don’t forget the apron!
For presentation, you can definitely do the onion volcano! Slice your onion, stack up the volcano, pour a little vodka inside and light it up. Be very careful!! Also, you can do a little flair with your utensils, crack eggs in a fun fashion and try to launch shrimp into your guests’ mouths.
We had a blast doing this! It was such a fun way to stay entertained during isolation. We will definitely be hosting another hibachi night with our friends once it is safe to be together again. Please let me know if you have any questions on specifics about this event.
What kind of theme nights are you having in your home during social distancing?
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