An Introduction to the Chinese Hot Pot (火鍋)

I promised a few posts ago that I would take you on a journey through a wonderful invention of the Chinese - the hot pot, also sometimes known as a steamboat. The reason I postponed this post for so long is that I hoped to enliven my description with some pictures of this variety and colour-filled meal. Alas, that plan never worked out. So without much ado, let me take the plunge and get started - hopefully there will be pictures to accompany this at a later point in time...

My first meeting with the hot pot brings back most wonderful memories of sitting around a massive dining table with the family (chinese of course) of one of my good friends back in New Zealand. The perfect dark and rainy night - the guests came in soaking wet, shed their soggy shoes and overcoats and walked into a warm and cosy home with good company, plenty of laughter and good cheer. Too busy chatting away to watch the process of setting up the table, once it was all ready, our eyes were treated to a most wonderful feast set out at the table - two pots (four if you take into consideration that each pot was divided into two) of boiling broth at the table surrounded by a countless array of little dishes with more variety of food than I have ever seen at a single meal! Fresh green leaves, white and brown spherical things, yellow fish shaped things, white cubes, yellow cylindrical things,mushrooms, raw eggs, raw shrimps (beady eyes, whiskers n all!)....the list could go on...

The food was completely uncooked and it seemed as though our hostess had laid all her ingredients out and was going to start cooking. Imagine my surprise then as everyone began to take their seat around the table!

As the meal progressed, I learnt that the colourful spherical things were meat and fish balls, the white cubes were fresh tofu, the yellow cylindrical things were bamboo shoots, the green leaves were spinach and bok choy, and the pink and white strips were paper-thin slices of beef and chicken. I learnt that eggs had to be broken gently into the simmering pot, watched carefully and picked out quickly lest an enthusiatic friend pops his chopsticks into the pot and your wannabe poached egg dissolves into the common soup! I learnt that you mix and match sauces into your personal bowl according to your taste and dip everything that comes out of the hot pot into the sauce mix before popping it into your mouth. I learnt (painfully) that food pulled out of boiling soup should not be tossed straight into your mouth, no matter how tasty it appears. Boiling soup = heat = mouth burn. I learnt that you use different sets of chopsticks for handling raw and cooked food and finally that you're best starting slow (tough for me!). The soup gets more flavoursome the further the meal progresses and as more ingredients go in and out of the soup base. It's actually quite ironic that the meal tastes best at the point when you're too full to eat...

The meal is immensely filling and satisfying, not to mention 100% guilt-free - there's just so many veggies in there and no oil! Finishing up with a most aromatic cup of jasmine tea, this was one of the best meals I've ever been invited to - although I had to cook it myself! Walking out that cold, rainy, miserable night I could barely feel the cold, my overcoat seemed way too bulky - there was just so much fuel in the furnace the cold completely vanished!

Soon after came the move to Abu Dhabi and I all but lost hope of ever enjoying this meal again. I considered investing in a hot pot and a portable burner many times, but never managed to find something suitable. Imagine my surprise and delight then when a friend of mine mentioned a local discovery - Qian Zhou Hot Pot!

Since this post is entitled, 'An Introduction', I shall leave my comprehensive review of Qian Zhou to my next post...and maintain an air of mystery about this unique experience. :)

Till next time folks!

Edit: I've added some pictures I managed to dig up from my first hot pot experience!

mmm...