During your Life In China, your views on hotpot will change according to The Hotpot Continuum, which has a p quotient of 7.3h and goes something like this:
~ one month in China: "Well that's pretty weird, but what a good business model."
~ two months in China: "Wow hotpot is so fun."
~ suddenly, and until about year three: "Fuck hotpot. Why should I have to pay to cook my own food? God damn this is taking like three hours and I have to talk to these people."
~ year four or five: "Man, I was so wrong about hotpot. This shit is incredible."
And you start hitting up after the club. And you stay in China forever. Perhaps you get married. Maybe you even get a driver's license, and other foreigners in the crosswalk stop and look at you driving, like, "hey, look at that foreigner driving a car!"
This is your life.
Sometime around then, you hit stage five -- making hotpot at home. You get complete quality control and creative control. You can play whatever music you like. This works well for when you "have people over", or you can dine solo. Hotpot is beautifully primal and communal. Making it at home is simple, and there are no strict rules. To prepare for this new stage of your Life In China, you will need:
- A pot and some cooking utensils
- Some kind of heat (electric stove is preferable so you can keep it on the table, but flame is fine, too)
- Ingredients to make a sauce (more on that later)
- Some meats and vegetables
- Some cold drinks. Hotpot is like the one time it's acceptable to enjoy cold drinks in China.
We managed to feed eight humans for 190rmb total.
The Soup
"My stove deserve a shout out. I'm like 'What up, stove?'" - 2 Chainz
Hotpot varies tremendously by region (and we have ). Out in Chongqing you get really oily, spicy, and numbing broth. Mongolian hotpot gets crazy with the lamb and mad herbs and spices. Beijing rocks that copper vessel with a chimney, and the broth is clearer so you can eat more vegetables. Down south in Guangzhou, they keep it qing dan -- clearer, lighter, and healthier. That's the style we're making today.
Of course, you could just buy those industrial packets of pre-made broth by brands like Xiao Fei Yang, but those contain tons of sodium and mystery ingredients. If you do wanna go the pre-made route, we suggest buying the mix for shui zhu yu (水煮鱼) or shui zhu roupian (水煮肉片), because that doesn't have any oil and tastes better. For our base we used:
- Half a chicken
- Some ginger
- A tomato
- Half a corn on the cob
- Jujubes (not the candy, and totally optional)
- Spring onions
- A bit of salt, to taste
- Some peppercorn (optional; you could also add chilis)
- Some mushrooms
Using the traditional Chinese cooking methodology, we didn't measure anything, just hooked this up to taste. Boil the soup for about 45 minutes, skimming the froth off the top once in a while. Note: If you really wanna do this right, cook the chicken for three hours on low heat, and add in the vegetables later.
The Sauce
In the meantime, you'll need to make some sauce. Our hotpot included a lot of lamb, so we built a sauce for that. You can find all these ingredients at a local supermarket like Lianhua.
- sesame paste (芝麻酱)
- you po lazi (油泼辣子 - optional; spicy)
- fermented bean curd pieces (豆腐乳半块)
- a little juice from that jar of bean curd (豆腐乳汁少许)
- cilantro (香菜)
- chopped green onion (小葱葱花)
- a pinch of salt (盐少许)
- a few cloves of garlic, pressed (蒜蓉)
- a bit of the hotpot broth
Just mix all that together, to taste.
If your hotpot involves seafood, you might prefer a sauce with:
- seafood soy sauce (海鲜酱油)
- sesame paste ((芝麻酱)
- peanut crumbs (like, just crush some 花生)
- cilantro (香菜)
- a bit of lemon juice (柠檬汁) and water
Again, every region has their own variation on sauce. In Taiwan, they use a special dipping soy sauce.
What Goes In The Pot
"Hammer on the dresser, work on the stove" - Lil Wayne
You can use whatever you like. Grab whatever looks fresh, just be sure to get a good mix of colors and textures. You don't have to use meat.
We used lamb, various kinds of tofu (some with meat, some without), fishballs, pork meatballs, sticky rice cakes, potatoes, cauliflower, mushrooms, and at the very end, some udon noodles. You could go wild with marble grade 7 Wagyu, foie gras meatballs, rooster testicles, dragon penis, whatever you want, man -- this is your life.
At all the local supermarkets, you can find sliced, frozen hotpot meat. And that's ok, but it's still frozen meat with mysterious origins. You could also go the more upscale route and get really nice cuts for Japanese shabu-shabu. You could even stop by one of those lamb restaurants and ask them to cut some hotpot meat for you (the ones on Wulumuqi Lu, near Fuxing Lu will do it).
If you're cooking on a flame stove, you'll wanna just add everything in then take the pot off and place it on the table. You may need to reheat the hotpot occasionally, especially when you add meat. If you've got an electric stove, you can just keep that on the table for the whole meal.
Thinly sliced meat cooks fast, but you'll need to wait a little longer for the meatballs, etc. (like, obviously).
The End
Indeed, this seems like quite a simple affair, but there is endless variation. You could do a Bangkok Suprise hotpot with lemongrass and chilis, or go K-Pop with the spicy red paste and instant noodles. Get wild with it, this is your Life In China, after all. And of course, there is the social aspect. Perhaps during one of these marathon hotpot sessions, your mother-in-law will show off her new electroshock suction device that cures wrinkles, or your new uncle will break out a top-shelf bottle of Baijiu as his golden retriever dry humps your leg.
If you've reached this stage of your Life In China, you're probably wearing a comfortable Septwolves or Three Gun Living Concept pajama set most of the time, so just kick back and put your feet up as you drop those noodles in at the end.
You deserve it.
[Stage Six on The Hotpot Continuum is death, btw].
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