How to Eat Chinese Hotpot

The pain of having hotpot with me (and my dad secretly agrees)

The Wanderluster
Aug 31, 2018 · 6 min read

The origins of Chinese hotpot is said to date as far back as 11th century, more than 1,000 years ago. With a hot cauldron of soup kept at boiling point set in the middle of the dining table, hotpot is an interactive meal where diners gather around and cook anything from an exhaustive list of raw ingredients such as meat, seafood, mushrooms and vegetables according to their preference. Once taken only during wintry days to warm the body, hotpot has become a social phenomenon popular with people of all ages and is enjoyed with family, colleagues and friends.

Soup Base

Depending on the hotpot style, the soup comes in a variety of flavours from savoury clear chicken soup, red fiery spicy soup, sour preserved vegetables soup, earthy mushroom soup to even collagen broth that comes in solid form before melting into nourishing goodness.

An interesting place that I just went has spicy butter in the shape of teddy bears, adding the fragrance of butter to the soup base.

The options for soup base is limitless and really up to your imagination. If I do this at home, I generally make do with whatever is available in my kitchen. During desperate times, even the instant noodles stock sachet does the trick. With the hotpot ingredients you cook in the soup, it will morph into something delish anyway.

Hotpot Ingredients

The list of hotpot ingredients is endless. Anything goes, really. Most types of meat, seafood, mushrooms and vegetables work. If you can get your hands on spongy soy products like “soybean puffs” and beancurd skin, that’s even better as they soak up the delicious soup. The only ingredients I wouldn’t recommend are those that take a very long time to cook, for example, tougher cuts of meats like brisket or shin.

My personal favourites are pork collar and belly from the black-haired pig varieties (think Japanese kurobuta and Spanish iberico), ox tongue, live shrimps, fried fish skin and wongbok. Some of the more exotic ingredients I’ve come across include chicken testicles in Hong Kong, and goose intestines and pig oesophagus in Chengdu, China.

Dipping Sauces

The particularities are not just in the soup base and hotpot ingredients. Even the dipping sauces are a mini buffet on their own. From all things spicy in the form of chilli slices, chilli paste and chilli oil; aromatics like chopped coriander, chives, spring onions and minced garlic; to flavourful sauces like soya sauce, black vinegar, sesame sauce and oyster sauce, mix and match whatever you like to make your own customised dipping sauce.

A common dipping sauce for spicy hotpot in Chengdu is a whole can of sesame oil, minced garlic and chopped spring onion which purportedly helps mellow the spiciness of the hotpot ingredients cooked in the lips-and-tongue-numbing concoction of dried chilli, Sichuan peppers, garlic and godzillion other spices.

As for me, I usually arm myself with a good old chilli sauce (and I don’t mean the ketchupy kind!) – the type that is a blend of spicy chilli, garlic, sugar and lime juice, and an impromptu mix of garlic, coriander, black vinegar and whatever catches my eye over a base of sesame sauce.

Etiquette

A longstanding fan of hotpot, I’ve frequented countless hotpot places in different countries and often make them at home too. So much so that I’ve established a set of of hotpot etiquette, much to the pain of my fellow diners, including my dad.

1. Don’t mix the utensils

Remember, we are dealing with raw food here. Separate utensils should be used for dining and handling of raw ingredients.

2. No plastic please

With soup hot enough to cook raw meat, please don’t dip any plastic or non-heatsafe utensils in the hotpot. My dad did exactly that with a pair of plastic chopsticks while I looked on in horror, screaming “It’s plastic!” with my mouth full nonetheless. You really don’t want anything inorganic dissolving into the soup.

3. Take time to enjoy

A hotpot meal takes time, especially with the myriad of hotpot ingredients to get through. Each hotpot ingredient is meant to be savoured slowly. If you are in a rush, please reschedule the meal.

Another roll-eye moment is when I see diners dump all the ingredients into the hotpot at one shot. People, this is not a stew. Cook each piece of meat, seafood, mushroom or vegetable as you eat. An exception is made for ingredients that require a longer cooking time such as wongbok, winter melon and radish. Also, do tend to your hotpot ingredients carefully. Otherwise they will be lost in the soup and everyone will have to wait while you do a search and rescue.

4. Cook each hotpot ingredient as it’s meant to be cooked

A good way to cook thinly sliced meat is to deploy the “seven up eight down” method which metaphorically refers to the palpitations of a worried or anxious heart in a Chinese saying. Simply dip the meat in and out of the boiling soup eight times and it should be nicely cooked.

While most meat and seafood cook well in all sorts of soup base, soup-absorbing ingredients like vegetables, mushrooms and the soy products I mentioned fare better in non-spicy soup base. The last thing you want is to choke on the spicy soup bursting in your mouth as you chomp on the shiitake mushrooms.

5. Stop refilling the stock until I say so!

The best part of the hotpot for me is the soup. After absorbing all the wonderful flavours of the meat, seafood, mushrooms and vegetables, the soup makes a precious bowl of elixir and nothing infuriates me more than seeing someone refill the soup without asking and diluting all the flavours. Very often, as the service staff approach with the soup kettle, I put up the emergency stop sign and unabashedly scoop a few bowls of soup on standby before allowing the refill.


All ready for your own hotpot experience? If you can’t get to a hotpot restaurant, try this at home. All you need are the following equipment:

As for the soup base, hotpot ingredients and dipping sauces, just let your imagination run wild. Now set the table, invite your hotpot dining party and have fun!

The Wanderluster

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An insatiable love for food, travel and all things good in life | More on: theroguewanderluster.wordpress.com Instagram: @TheRogueWanderluster

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