how to make hot pot at home

How to make hot pot at home? Here's how-to, Chinese style.

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When fall comes, the annual hot pot season starts! Hot Pot is the best meal to enjoy with friends and family. You can just chat all night over yummy hot food and drinks. It’s super easy to prepare the Chinese style hot pot, all you need to do is to buy the ingredients, wash them then cut them into bite size pieces. And you may ask...

What is hot pot?

Hot pot is a meal where a soup base is being simmered in a pot on a cooktop throughout on a dining table and you can just cook the bite-size raw food in the boiling broth and enjoy it when cooked with dipping sauce. There are many different styles, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. 

How to make hot pot?

Very simple and straightforward!

  1. Prepare all the food you like to eat: meat, veggies, noodles, etc.
  2. Wash them, then cut them into bite size pieces.
  3. Put them all on the table where you'll do the hot pot.
  4. Pour the soup base of your choice into a pot and boil it on top of a cooktop
  5. When the soup base boils, you can start!

How to eat hot pot?

In order to enjoy hot pot, you need some equipment besides the food: a pot, a table top cooktop and fuel, a spoon strainer per person.

The sky's the limit when it comes to the hot pot ingredients. You can do whatever you like as long as they're in bit size and be able to cook thoroughly in a broth. However, there are usual items that will cook well and taste nicely in a hot pot. See my shopping list below for some suggestions.

One tip - hot pot is considered "heaty" from a Chinese medicine perspective, due to the boiling broth, rich ingredients like fatty meats, flavorful dipping sauces and the spices. You can enjoy hot pot with some Chinese herbal tea to reduce the heatiness and soothe the body. I got a recommendation in the shopping list for you below.

Is hot pot healthy?

Hot pot could be very healthy, dependent on what ingredients you put in, what sauces you use. If you are health-conscious like me,

  • Try to prepare more vegetables, less meat. Tofu is a great substitute for meat. They're super tasty after soaking up the broth. 
  • Do more fresh meat than processed meat.
  • When you cook the veggie, don't cook too long as the nutrients will dissolve into the broth if it's over-cooked.
  • Choose a high quality broth made with real ingredients instead of those that are loaded with MSG. I got a great recommendation below, made by a famous Taiwanese restaurant.
  • Pair hot pot with a Chinese herbal tea to remove heatiness and soothe your body as sometimes you could get sore throat and swollen gum if you get too heaty.
  • Avoid too many carbs, although they're so delicious, I know... A healthier alternative of instant noodles, which is a popular carb option for hot pot, is dried non-fried instant noodles. See below a suggestion of Yam noodle in the shopping list. They taste just as good as usual fried instant noodle but much healthier!

What to put in a hot pot?

Here's the shopping list:

Soup base:

This is the most important decision for the meal as it’s how every single piece of food will taste like. These Taiwanese hot pot soup bases are made by one of the most famous and reputable hot pot restaurants in Taiwan, named Taihodien Restaurant. There are spicy and non spicy options. For those who love Taiwanese delicacy duck blood, you can pair the spicy hot pot broth with the duck blood in broth, It's heaven!

The reason we love the Taihodien Restaurant hot pot soup base is that they are made with authentic, real ingredients, instead of loads of artificial flavors or MSG. You can tell the difference - if you feel super thirsty after the hot pot, that means the broth you used is made with loads of MSG. 

Equipment:

Hot Pot Ingredients:

Veggie, Soy & Noodles

Meat

  • Beef Slides - these beef and lamb slides are from Little Sheep, a famous hot pot restaurant chain from China. Although we're not a fan of their soup base because we always feel uber thirsty after the meal when we use it. Their cut of meat is just perfect for hot pot. How they cut it and freeze it is just perfect. Highly recommend them!
  • Lamb Slides 
  • Pork Slides
  • Spam/ Luncheon Meat - Maling ones are of the best proportion of fat and meat. I found it the best for hot pot after trying countless brands. The Korean ones are too lean for Chinese hot pot (although they're great for other dishes), in our opinion.
  • Beef Balls 
  • Pork Balls

Seafood

  • Shrimp Paste - put a tablespoonful of it into the hot pot, one at a time. They will become very chewy, bouncy shrimp meatballs.
  • Shrimps - get the largest ones you can get, remember to devein and deshell them for ease of eating. Or get this one from Amazon Fresh, it's ready for hot pot out of the pack!
  • Scallop
  • Fish Balls - we've tried a dozen brands since we moved to the U.S., this is the best, most bouncy of all! 
  • Cuttlefish Balls 
  • Cheese Fish Tofu
  • Fish Fish (Bean) Curd - this is hugely popular in Hong Kong. It basically is a mix of fish balls and tofu but not as mushy as tofu and not as meaty as fish ball. Try it and you know what I mean and why Hong Kong people are in love with these.
  • Fish Dumplings

Condiments

Drinks

One important note: throughout the dinner, add boiling hot water to the soup base whenever half of it boils off. 

Now, it's your turn! 

While you're enjoying the yummy hot pot, and showing it off on social media, don't forget to tag us @thehongkongfoodies so that we can see your version! 

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