A story about a hot pot cooking mistake has become a hot topic on Japanese social media.

Twitter user Azunyoro (@azuo0607) picked up some purple Napa cabbage (known in Japan as 紫白菜 murasaki hakusai or パープル白菜 pāpuru hakusai). Relatively rare in Japanese supermarkets and greengrocers, purple Napa cabbage is smaller than the common green Napa cabbage.

Azunyoro was excited to find this unusual cabbage with its attractive color and decided to make his favorite vegetable hot pot dish, replacing the usual green cabbage with the purple one, and then adding the other standard ingredients, mizuna greens, enoki mushrooms, King trumpet mushrooms, and broth...

He didn't do anything wrong. These were the same ingredients he always used. But some people may think twice before cooking with such an unusually colored vegetable...

Here's how the hot pot turned out, along with Azunyoro's comments:

He didn't do anything wrong, but these images have the unmistakable air of a cooking failure.

It probably tastes great! And yet, even if some studies suggest that the antioxidants responsible for the purple and blue colors, known as anthocyanins, may be good for your health, that dark violet-colored soup, the blue-violet enoki mushrooms, and the turquoise and cerulean discoloration of the King oyster mushrooms don't exactly whet your appetite...

Images of the hot pot went viral, garnering nearly 130,000 likes and over 35,300 retweets at the time of writing. Here are some of the comments they elicited:

• "It may be delicious, but it looks completely poisonous."
• "Visually, it's just too overwhelming. In a way, it might be a good dish for dieting (lol)"
• "Is that a witch's brew? It looks like a good Halloween dish!"

If anything, the dish may have inspired some people to try it as a fun Halloween party idea!