Hot Pot In China

I had never been a fan of hot pot before moving to China, and never understood the obsession with cooking food in soups, because I often found the result to be tasteless.  Yes, there are many different kinds of soup bases, including the very spicy Sichuan style hot pots which would definitely provide a great deal of flavour, but it was still not for me.

If you don’t know what Hot Pot is, it is often also referred to as steamboat (in South East Asia), shabu shabu (in Japan) and a variety of other different names depending on the country you’re in.  As expected, each country’s version differs slightly but the basic idea is to start with a pot of soup and then you wait until it boils before you start adding raw ingredients into the pot, which will be cooked very quickly by the hot soup.  Typical hot pot ingredients include thinly sliced meat (usually beef or lamb), vegetables of all varieties, fish balls and noodles.  Apparently, hot pot has been enjoyed for over a thousand years in China and Mongolia. 

My views on hot pot began to change when I moved to Shenzhen.  During the first few months, my friends brought me to a few local hot pot establishments and I realized that hot pot has evolved quite a bit since I last tried it.  By the time I discovered a local hot pot chain called Hot Pot Republic (千味涮), my views were already completely changed and I was convinced that hot pot was one of my new favourite dining experiences.  The literal translation of 千味涮 would be thousand tastes dipping, which makes no sense at all in English, but the idea is that you’re constantly dipping your ingredients into the pot to cook it, so when you take that into consideration, it starts to make a bit of sense. 

I’m sure this is very common in China, but Hot Pot Republic was the first place I’d been to where they had a standalone station full of sauces and condiments where you could create your own concoction of dipping sauces.  The variety was enormous and this was where I absolutely fell in love with hot pot. 

  

I ended up being such a big fan of hot pot that it was the site of both my farewell dinners when I left Shenzhen and Guangzhou.  I also brought my sisters there when they came to visit to show them how different hot pot was in China and we all agreed that we would have liked hot pot much more if it tasted like it did in China.