Don’t like Hot Pot? It’s your fault.

Don’t like Hot Pot? It’s your fault. 

Five minutes to show you why it’s true

It is a challenging task to gather people eat around the same table while satisfying individual favors to foods. The conflicts in choosing food, the differences in people’s preferences, the difficulties in matching nutrition, the time length of cooking different meals, all of the those frustrate every family and squad. The Western solution is ordering your own dishes. However, whenever all dishes arrive at the table, the first thing I always do is not eating my own, but try to catch a glimpse of others food to see what I have missed. Things go extremely bad when I find my food does not meet my expectation and others enjoy theirs pretty much. Asian people come up with a brilliant solution—hot pot. It can satisfy everyone desire for foods.

Imagine a metal pot of boiling broth on a burner while a variety of hot pot raw and fresh ingredients are served at tableside, you and your friend sitting together share hot, warm food. No need to cook, you just add what you want to eat into the boiling broth, sharing your thoughts on food. Hotpot is an excellent communal experience and a great way to share food. To eat hot pot, we must know that there are three essential elements in creating a successful hot pot: broth, ingredients, sauce. 

BROTHS  

Broths are the fundament of a good hot pot. It decides the flavor of the food. There are over 20 kinds of soup base in different regions of China. This variety is due to cultural differences. In the central China area, for example, Sichuan, pepper is everything. But the broth is entirely different in the South. You can even try Cantonese soup base that is made of coconut water and chicken. There are major three categories of hot pot in China, and you can try it in Los Angeles as well.

• Sichuan Hot Pot
• Northern Style Hot Pot
• Cantonese Hot Pot

Sichuan Hot Pot

Even though I mention spicy broth is everything for Sichuan hot pot, it doesn't mean you can only see spicy red broth boiling in front of you. They invent a hot pot named-- Trellis Hot Pot. The whole pot is separated into nine different blocks. You might ask what is the difference between those blocks as they share the same soup base. The temperature matters. The middle square is the hottest area for instant boiling meat. Restaurants will slice meat into paper's thickness. There is a formula to boil meat—seven up and eight down, which means the meat will become tasty after you put it into boiling broth for seven times.  For four blocks in the corner of the Trellis hot pot, people usually add ingredients that take time to be cooked, for example, eggs and fish. And the cross area is for vegetables and meatballs.

Northern Style Hot Pot

Northern style hot pot originates from Mongolian, so the major ingredient is lamb. Typically, the soup base would be only water with mushroom and green onions. Different from Sichuan hot pot, they don’t put too many emphases on broth but on the quality of food and the sauce that I will introduce later. However, there are still many people from the North like spicy food. In this way, another great design appears--double flavor hot pot. This split pot can have two different broth in the same pot. To me, it stands for a mixture of culture, and inclusion of differences.

Cantonese Hot Pot

Speaking of Cantonese dish, the first thing comes to mind must be Cantonese dim sum. Same as dim sum, the Cantonese soup base is mild. Most of the soup base cooked with chicken or seafood. The most popular one should be coconut chicken soup base that most of the foreigners will remember when they try that.

INGREDIENTS 

• Meat 
• Greens and Vegetable 
• Seafood
• Noodles

Hot Pot ingredients are served raw and cooked tableside during the meal, featuring paper-thin slices of tender meat and fresh vegetables. But in Chinese hot pot restaurant, there are far more food choices than that. You can try anything in the hot pot. Many foreigners are shocked when they heard what kinds of food Chinese would add to hot pot. For example, goose intestine, tripes, quail eggs, brain, duck tongue. A suggestion to people who are afraid to give a try: “The great part about hot pot meat choices is that you have the opportunity to try something funky, like beef tripe,” Chen said. “You can try something you never would usually try with little risk because it’s not the only thing you’re tasting. You’ve got the broth, your sauces, and your vegetables — your beef tripe is easily disguised.”(Foodbeast). Besides meat, vegetables are vital in hot pot. Thinking of potato that fully absorb the essence of Sichuan hot pot broth or a crisp cucumber after a spicy bite of meat, you will understand what kind of magic vegetables can bring.

DIPPING SAUCE

Dipping sauce is the most creative step for most of the foodies to customize their dishes. You can combine over 20 sauce to make your favorite flavors. The dipping sauces include sesame, oil, garlic, Szechuan chili, oyster sauce, xo sauce, green onions and so on. There are two major plates:

• Dry spice plate 
• Oil plate 

Dry spice plate：

ATTENTION!!! 

Only advanced gamer can try this dry spice plate. You would be blown away if you can't stand with pepper. The secret of enjoying this sauce is to experience the difference between the spicy taste of broth and dry spice pepper. 

Oil plate: A typical sauce for northern style hot pot are sesame sauce, oil, garlic. The quality of sesame sauce decides how local Beijingers evaluate the restaurants. 

WANT TO TRY IN LA?

CHENDU LAOZAO HOT POT, 227 W Valley Blvd, San Gabriel, CA 91776 | (626) 293-7099

Shancheng Lameizi 18932 Gale Ave, Rowland Heights, CA | (626) 581-8808

Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot 45 S. Fair Oaks Ave, Pasadena, CA 91105 | (626) 229-0888

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Citation:
Tessa Newell, 2016, Foodbeast, Available from https://www.foodbeast.com/news/a-beginners-guide-to-eating-hot-pot/