Hot pot - Books - Famous Chinese Shopping City

March 8, 2014


		1 Introduction 2 Huoguo 3 History 4 Common ingredients 5 Variations 6 Cultural Significance 7 British hot pot 8 See also 9 External Links

Famous Chinese Shopping City Books

Hot pot

Wikipedia

Image:Hotpot with grill.jpg|thumb|300px|Hot pot with grill surrounding it.
Hot pot (火鍋) is a communal Asian dish consisting of a simmering pot of stock at the center of the dining table. A heat source of some kind keeps the hot pot simmering. Ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, and seafood. The cooked food is usually eaten with a dipping sauce. In China, hot pot is often eaten in the winter when people like food that warms their bodies and lifts their spirits.

Hot pot originated in the northern parts of China. It spread to the south during the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-906). Later, the northern nomads who settled in China enhanced the hot pot with such meat as beef and mutton, and southerners did the same with seafood. By the Ching dynasty, the hot pot became popular throughout most of China.

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Huoguo

Huoguo (Traditional Chinese:??????/Simplified Chinese: ??????) is the Chinese name for "Hotpot", where Huo means Fire, while Guo refers to Pot). Hot Pot is famous in Sichuan Province, where it has evolved into a distinctive style. The pot with soup base, usually very spicy, made of dozens of staples, is placed in the center of the table with a stove underneath keeping it boiling. People put vegetables, meat and many other food in it to cook and eat with sesame oil, mashed garlic, sesame sauce, Sichuan pepper, etc. Huoguo Buffet is very popular. City of Chengdu and Chongqing are especially famous for their different kinds of Huoguo.

The soup base is the first important thing about Huoguo. Different restaurants might develop different kinds of soup base flavors. Fish, chicken, pork, lamb, beef, rabbit, frog could all be used as the material. However it is usually a chicken stock base to begin with, and then other meats and ingredients are added for varying flavours.

Sichuan huo guo could be used to distinguish from simply Huo guo in case when people refer to the Northern Style Hot Pot in China, shuan yang rou (Instant-Boiled lamb) could be viewed as the representative of this kind of food, which does not focus on the soup base.

In the United States, many restaurants refer to it by its Japan|Japanese name, Shabu shabu.

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History

Image:Photograph_of_a_steam_boat_cooking.jpg|thumbnail|A hotpot cooking
Image:Inside_the_steamboat.jpg|thumbnail|Inside the hotpot
Although steamboat is commonly associated with Chinese cuisine (steamboat being the Cantonese (linguistics)|Cantonese name for the meal) , the process has origins in Northern China, emerging in primitive forms over a thousand years ago. Mongolian nomads would cook meat and vegetables in a "Hot pot" over the embers of a camp fire, and it is this culinary tradition which has been adopted in various forms in many provinces of modern day China.

A Sichuan style Hot pot is markedly different from the style eaten in Taiwan, for example. Quite often the differences lie in the meats used, the type of soup base, and the sauces and condiments used to flavor the meat, to name a few. A southern style steamboat will usually feature seafood, where as this is rarely found in a northern style Hot pot. In Xishuangbanna, near Myanmar, the broth is often divided into a yin and yang shape - a bubbling, fiery red chilli broth on one side, and a cooler white chicken broth on the other.

Today, in many modern homes in modern China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, particularly in the big cities, the traditional coal heated steamboat or Hot pot has been replaced with electric or gas versions.

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Common ingredients

Stock

Water

Chicken

Salt

Meat

Thinly sliced beef, pork chicken goat

Fish pieces

Prawns

Scallops

Mussels

Meatballs

Fishballs

Offal, ear and other delicacies

Squid

Vegetables

Cabbage

Choy Sum

Snake Beans

Bean Shoots

Shallots

Varieties of Mushrooms

Ginger

Condiments

Hoisin|Hoi Sin Sauce

Soy Sauce

Satay Sauce

Chilli

This list is by no means comprehensive. Because steamboat and Hot pot styles change so much from region to region, many different ingredients are used. While not strictly traditional, it is fun to experiment with ingredients and sauces according to one's own tastes. The addition of South East Asian influences like coriander and lemon is a good example.

The Chinese steamboat is sometimes referred to as hot pot, not to be confused with the Lancashire_Hotpot|British hot pot.

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Variations

In Beijing (Peking), hot pot is eaten year-round. Frozen meat is shaved to near paper thinness and rolled into tubes and stacked high on serving plates. Meats used include lamb, beef, chicken, and others. The cooking pot is often sunken into the table and fueled by propane, or alternatively is above the table and fueled by hot coals. Meat or vegetables are loaded individually into the hot cooking broth by chopsticks, and cooking time is brief. Meat often only takes 15 to 30 seconds to cook. Vegetables are often cooked last to avoid absorbing too much spice. A peanut-based dipping sauce is usually offered. Note: After handling raw meat, chopstick ends should be immersed in the boiling broth for a few seconds to prevent self-inflicted food poisoning. Typical Beijing hot pot is eaten outside during the summer. Different kinds of hot pot can be found in Beijing - typically, more modern eateries offer the sectioned bowl with differently flavored broths in each section. More traditional or older establishments serve a fragrant, but mild, broth in the Mongolian firepot, which is a large brass vessel, which is heated by burning coals in a central chimney. Broth is boiled in a deep, donut-shaped bowl surrounding the chimney (see extrenal links for some images of the Mongolian firepot).

The Manchurian hot pot (東北酸菜火鍋) uses plenty of Chinese sauerkraut (酸菜) to make the pot's stew sour. In the Taiwanese hot pot, people eat the food with a dipping sauce consisting of sacha sauce and raw egg. The use of thinly sliced red meat in hot pot probably originated from the nomadic Mongolians. The Korean variation has a mini-grill next to the pot that is used to grill the meat.

One of the most famous variations, aside from the Canton hot pot (using chicken broth as soup base), is the Szechwan "ma la" (麻辣, Extreme Spicy) Hot Pot: the amount of chilli used in the hot broth can be so hot that it was said to dull one's taste's sensation for brief moments, hence "ma la". It was usually used to eat variety meats as well as sliced mutton filet.
Image:Hotpot.jpg|thumb|300px|Hot pot meals can get messy towards the end.

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Cultural Significance

Eating hot pot with family or friends often gives the diners a sense of togetherness. Weilu — to 'circle' a hot pot — has a deep and profound meaning to the Chinese people, who traditionally adhere to Confucianism|Confucian ideas, which strongly emphasize unity with family and clan. The hot pot style of dining is often taken nice and slow; the diners often chat while they are eating together. Beer is the beverage of choice at a hot pot meal in China.

Hot pot is traditionally eaten as part of the Chinese New Year feast. The roundness of the pot is itself a symbol the unity of the family.

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British hot pot

The dish referred to as "hot pot" (or "hotpot") in Britain is quite different, frequently found listed amongst the usual pub grub dishes. It is primarily a casserole of lamb, kidneys and root vegetables such as carrots, turnip and onions or leeks, covered with a layer of sliced potatoes. For more information, refer to Lancashire Hotpot.

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