Hot Pot 火鍋

Hot Pot, also known as steamboat or soup-food, is a cooking method in which raw ingredients are cooked in a  simmering broth. It is characterized by cooking and eating at the same time. The food is still hot when eating. People, therefore, love to have hot pot in freezing winter. Typical ingredients to put in a hot pot include seafood, sliced potatoes, sliced meat, tofu, mushrooms, meatballs, glass noodles, vegetables, etc. Ingredients will be pre-sliced into smaller and thin sections so that they will be cooked quickly. Moreover, it is common to dip that already-cooked food in various seasonings to add more flavor. Different types of hot pot have different seasonings such as soy sauce, sesame paste, chili sauce, Shacha sauce, and vinegar. 

The origin of hot pot is actually recorded as early as in the “Book of Wei”. During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, there was a container, a tripod. When performing sacrifices or celebrations, the custom was to ring the bell and prepare a tripod. All ingredients such as beef and mutton were put into the tripod, and then the food was cooked by lighting a fire at the bottom of the tripod. This is the prototype of a hotpot. During the Three Kingdoms period, when Cao Pi became emperor of Wei after his father Cao Cao died, a pot made of copper was invented, but hot pot was not popular at that time. In fact, hot pot, known as “gu-dong soup” in ancient times, was so named because of the “gu-dong” sound when food is put into boiling water. During the Yuan Dynasty, hot pots became more prevalent. Originally it was popular in the cold northern regions of China, people used the pot to cook all kinds of meat such as pigs, cattle, sheep, chicken, and fish. 

In the Qing Dynasty, the hot pot had become a winter delicacy of the court. Emperor Qianlong once held 530 tables of hot pot feasts in the Qianqing Palace, which is the emperor’s audience hall in Forbidden City, to entertain the imperial family. When Emperor Jiaqing ascended the throne, he held a banquet for thousands of people, using 1,550 pots made of silver, tin, and copper. By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, with the increasingly developed economy, the hot pot was further developed. Dozens of different hot pots had been formed in the country and each had its own characteristics.

One of the most well-known southern variants is Chongqing Hot Pot, which adds chili and Sichuan peppercorns into the broth to have a spicy and numbing flavor. A typical dip and condiment of Chongqing hotpot contains sesame oil and is mixed with crushed fresh garlic and chopped green onions. Due to the high humidity in the area, locals eat spicy food to remove moisture from the body (Xu, Q., & Hao, Z., 2013).

For northern style, one of the most famous is the Manchu hotpot. Plenty of Suan Cai, also known as Chinese sauerkraut, is put into the broth in order to make it sour. Another popular northern type of hot pot that is quite different is the instant-boiled mutton. It focuses more on the main ingredients instead of the broth flavor.

Author Esa Chen

References

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