You should be eating more hotpot, and you should be doing it at home.
I know hotpot is one of those cultural things that some of you might not “get”. If that describes you, we want to try to make you a convert – it’s a fun way to eat that takes an enormous amount of pressure off the cook. It’s like… if you smashed together a ‘one pot meal’ and a ‘cookout’ in the best possible way.
We wanted to stay away the firey Sichuan style of hotpot – it’s quite difficult thing to execute at home, and most people would just purchase a pre-made base if you want it (links to both Chef Wang Gang and the blog ChinaSichuanFood Sichuan hotpot recipes, in the pinned comment below). Instead, we wanted to talk about more ‘general’, not-spicy hotpots that can form a base for whatever hotpot you want to whip up.
EXAMPLE HOTPOT INGREDIENTS
You can find example menus at hotpot here:
https://www.zmenu.com/haidilao-hotpot-arcadia-3-online-menu/
and here:
1. Meats: Sliced beef, lamb, pork, fish. Poultry (cut into chunks).
2. Organ: duck tongue, intestine, beef tripe, liver, pork brain.
3. Meat products: Fresh pork/beef balls, spam, frozen meat balls, fish balls, quail eggs.
4. Tofu, tofu products, etc: firm tofu, frozen tofu, tofu puffs, tofu skins, seitan, konjac.
5. Seafood: clams, shrimp, squid, octopus.
6. Leafy veggies: water spinach, spinach, bak choy, napa cabbage, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower.
7. Root/hearty veg: sweet potato, potato, yam, Chinese yam, taro, jicama, cassava, corn, chestnut, gobo, daikon, carrot.
8. Mushroom/fungi: king oyster, oyster, porcini, enoki, chestnut, button, shiitake, wood ear, snow ear.
9. Kelp: sea lettuce, kombu.
10. Starch: noodles, rice noodles, rice cake.
INGREDIENTS, PORK BONE BASE
– Pork bones (猪筒骨), 500g. We used the leg bone. It’s best if the bone’s got a touch of meat still on it. Ribs would also work fine.
– Hot, boiled water, 2.5L
– Ginger (姜), 2 inches, smashed.
– Dacong a.k.a. welsh onion (大葱), ~2-3 two inch sections -or- 1/8 of a white onion.
– Daikon Radish (萝卜), 500g. Peeled and cut into ~2 inch chunks.
– Seasoning: 1/2 tbsp salt, 1 tsp chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), optional 1/8 tsp white pepper powder (白胡椒粉).
PROCESS, PORK BONE BASE
1. Soak the pork in cool water for 30 minutes.
2. Move to a pot of cool water, cover, and over a high flame bring to a boil. Boil for ~2 minutes, then remove.
3. Give the pork a quick rinse under running water.
4. Fry the pork bones in ~1/2 tbsp of oil until lightly browned, ~2-3 minutes. Add in the hot, boiled water, the ginger, and the onion. Bring to a boil, then down to a simmer. Cover, simmer on low for at least ~1 hour.
5. Add in the daikon, then cover it back up. Simmer for one hour more.
6. Season, then move over to your table.
INGREDIENTS, GUIYANG PICKLED GREENS & BEANS HOTPOT
– Dried lima beans (芸豆) -or- kidney beans (腰豆), 120g.
– Pork belly (五花肉), 200g
– Soy sauce to marinate the pork belly, 1 tsp.
– Aromatics: 3 cloves garlic, ~2 inches ginger (姜). Both minced.
– Suancai, Chinese pickled mustard greens (酸菜), 150g. Minced.
– Stock, 4 cups; Bean cooking liquid, 2 cups.
– Corn, 1 ear. Cut into ~four pieces.
– Tomato, 1. Cut into slices.
– Green garlic (蒜苗) -or- scallion (葱), 2 sprigs. Cut into one inch sections.
– Seasoning [skip if your stock is already seasoned]: 1/2 tbsp salt, 1 tsp chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉)
Note – if your stock is already seasoned (e.g. if you were using the broth above) do not season twice.
PROCESS, GUIYANG PICKLED GREENS & BEANS HOTPOT
1. Rinse your dried beans, and soak in the fridge overnight.
2. Add your beans to 2 liters of boiling water. Cover, and cook on medium low for ~2 hours, or until the beans are soft enough to mash.
3. Remove the beans. Reserve half, then take the other half of the beans and mash them. Reserve two cups of the bean cooking liquid.
4. Medium flame, fry the pork belly for ~5 minutes, or until it’s browned and’s started to release some lard. Remove, reserve.
5. Flame still on medium, fry the garlic/ginger in the rendered fat until fragrant, ~30 seconds. Then add the minced suancai pickled greens, and fry for another minute until fragrant. Then add in the minced beans and fry for one minute more. Remove and reserve.
6. Add the 2 cups bean liquid and 4 cups stock. Mix in the mashed bean mix from step 5 together with the remaining beans. Bring to a boil.
7. Season, skim, add in the corn, fried pork belly, tomato, and green garlic.
Footage:
Mark Wiens’ shabu shabu video: youtube.com/watch?v=f7HIc3B0BLI&t
Wang Gang’s family meal: youtube.com/watch?v=V-7RL7nlcj0
Food Ranger’s fly restaurant video: youtube.com/watch?v=5TG3iimkEME
And check out our Patreon if you’d like to support the project!
http://www.patreon.com/ChineseCookingDemystified
Outro Music: คิดถึงคุณจัง by ธานินทร์ อินทรเทพ
Found via My Analog Journal (great channel): https://youtu.be/GHaL5H-VYRg
Hey guys, a few notes:
1. I wanted to quickly touch on Dunlop’s views on hotpot, because I definitely took what she said out of context. If you read the breadth of her work, she’s got pretty nuanced opinions – while hotpot wasn’t love at first bite for her, she definitely grew to love it. She’s talking about more the trend of restaurants being replaced by hotpot restaurants for economic reasons, which’s definitely a phenomenon.
2. Everything that I said about why hotpot makes sense to feed a crowd means that it’s also quite a bit easier to execute from a business perspective. Instead of having a vast menu, the restauranteur can focus solely on making a great hotpot base, which can keep well. In an age where rents are quickly skyrocketing in big cities, those economic factors can make a difference. So in some ways, I can understand where Dunlop and even Lam are coming from. That said, I think it’d make a lot more sense to focus on the underlying economic factors hurting the F&B industry (globally, I might add!), rather than placing the blame on hotpot itself.
3. So right. Spicy, Sichuan-style hotpot base. A while back, I (Chris) was really into trying to make a video on it, because early on in this channel there wasn’t any good resources on hot to make Sichuan hotpot in English. Then ChinaSichuanFood dropped her recipe here: https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/soup-base-for-hot-pot/ Pretty great stuff, but I thought “hmm… we can still get closer to that Chongqing flavor”… then Wang Gang dropped his https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4qYnXnfm0Q Which pretty much took out… all the wind in my sails haha. Both recipes are great – if you’re interesting in making your own Sichuan hotpot base, those would be our recommendations. But because making Sichuan hotpot base is just so intense, it was difficult to find motivation to do that sort of video lol.
4. Here in China, we can find some outstanding Sichuan hotpot bases on Taobao from small workshops. I think this’s the most realistic way to make a great Sichuan hotpot at home. Haidilao’s – the brand we mention in the video – packaged base isn’t quite at that level, but is definitely good enough to get that flavor. If you like, you can add a bit more base/more chilis/some green Sichuan peppercorns to theirs in order to amp up the flavor a bit.
5. I was looking at the prices of Haidilao in the USA… good god, about $50 a head? Maybe I’m cheap, but uh… they do sell their base on Amazon lol.
6. A couple mea culpas. 0:32 – that's sukiyaki, not shabu shabu. 0:34 – that's mu kratha, not suki. Basically, it's always a bit difficult to find usable footage online, and I… just opted for tangential stuff instead of visuals for the exact thing I was looking for. In hindsight, I probably should've added a note in the video, or even re-done the narration. But, I was lazy. So really, my bad.
7. For the pickled greens & beans hotpot, the way to eat it is that once it begins to boil down and thicken, spoon some of the soup and beans over white rice. Awesome.
8. A few other dipping sauces:
– Roasted chili flakes. Get some dry chili, toast it in a dry wok till has a chestnut color, pound it into powder or tiny flakes, mix it with Sichuan peppercorn powder, salt, soy sauce, MSG, minced ginger, garlic, scallion, then add some soup from the hotpot.
– Another choice – use the Guizhou fermented chili paste we showed before (https://youtu.be/WEToUavZ2uA )… add in garlic, scallion, cilantro, zhe'ergen (fish wort root), then add some soup from the hotpot.
– You can use either of the above two for the pickled greens & beans pot. Some other possible additions: douchi (fermented soy bean), furu (fermented tofu), edible litsea (may chang) oil, minced celery, green garlic, etc.
– To go along with the northern style lamb hotpot, the classic dipping sauce is sesame sauce. Mix some toasted sesame paste, furu fermented tofu, and Chinese chive blossom sauce (the brand Wang Zhihe should be available overseas). On top of that, you can add in sugar, soy sauce, shrimp oil/fish sauce, MSG, vinegar, chili oil, chili flakes, toasted sesame, toasted and/or crushed peanut for extra flavor.
– For a beef hotpot, Teochew style shacha sauce is aweomse. Mix Teochow style shacha sauce, hoisin sauce, garlic, cilantro.
– Besides those, at the risk of over-simplifying… here’s a 'formula' of sorts for you to play around and create your own: sauces (soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame, hoisin, Laoganma, furu fermented tofu, douchi fermented soybean…) + aromatics and herbs (garlic, ginger, scallion, cilantro, Chinese celery…) + chili (dry, fresh, toasted or not…) + spice powder (Sichuan peppercorn, cumin, black/white pepper) + nuts (toasted and crushed sesame or peanut)
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If you don't have time to make a base/don't have storebought base at home, just throw some chunks of scallion, smashed whole garlic cloves, and smashed ginger hunks into the pot and call it a day. Start your meal with some meat and mushrooms to add some depth to the broth. As a northerner, I'm a fan of clear soup bases – light stock is okay, but nothing too strong or oily – it all tastes the same when you have a strong mala base or a tomato base, whereas with a clear base or a light broth, you can taste the ingredients and the dipping sauce. With a clear broth or just water plus some herbs, you can really taste it as the broth base gains complexity with each meat and veggie ingredient you add. I use soup base when I have it, but when I'm in the mood and I don't have any hot pot base or stock at home, I go for water + scallions.
Honestly I want to try it so badly
27.2.23
These lazy, privileged critics will never understand the freedom of actually cooking things the way you like, pretentiousness is rather dangerous y know
answer: You should ALWAYS hotpot at home, with as many awesome friends as possible.
Theses reviewers just sound like butthurt Chinese nerds mad about Korean food stylings because they're incredibly racist, as always.
I love y'all so much, you somehow do anthropological work alongside excellent cooking tutorials and it's phenomenal
lol who cares what the ignorant critics of the west think? It just shows their sheer ignorance.
Hotpot is worldwide! There's so many varieties in China and throughout Southeast Asia that people forget that there's versions in Europe (several soups, especially in Northern Europe are served communally like a hotpot, and for all that the ingredients are extremely different, fondue and some communally-fried fried foods are kind of hotpot in disguise), and in the Southern US there's the crawfish boil. I don't know enough about South American or African cooking to be certain, but I'd be surprised if they didn't have their own hotpots. The basic idea of a group dipping bits of food in boiling water and making a party of it is ubiquitous.
China does have some of the best hotpots in my opinion, but of course everyone has their own tastes.
(And, although it's too heavy to have very often, and it's absolutely not for the lactose intolerant, for me the occasional fondue is a close second. Crawfish boil might beat it out if I lived in the South, but as it is, the slightly anemic version (as I've been assured it is by Southerners) that you can occasionally find in the North comes in behind other Asian hotpots like sukiyaki, nabemono, budae jiggae (it doesn't have to be hotpot, but it's often served that way), and jeongol.)
How is the dipping sauce WITH chilis not spicy, but the one WITHOUT chilis is the spicy one?