The winter season is something everyone looks forward to. Things get fuzzier and people are nicer during the holiday seasons. Some people can't wait for the first drop of snow and go boarding/skiing. Fashionistas start hopping on websites for online clothing shopping. People with nothing better to do run around the neighborhood, harassing civilians with annoying christmas songs. But for the Chinese people, winter only means one thing: hot pot. In chinese, we call it 'huo guo' which literally means 'fire pot', or 'da bean low' in cantonese. The concept of hoarding over a pot with a smorgasbord of fresh vegetables, seafood and thinly-sliced meat originated in Mongolia. Just imagine big, nomadic people in armor with shields/swords throwing a campfire sans marshmallows. It is absolutely freezing in the desert! Korean-style bbq and Japanese yakiniku bbq also originated from Mongolia. They would grill meat on their metal shields and use their helmets to boil soup. Genius. The same shield that is stained of blood also serves as a culinary gadget. Maybe it adds flavoring.My college friends and I get together once in a while to shoot the sh*t and we love to do it over a big communal meal with beer. I headed over to 99 Ranch Market to acquire the goods. I love buying stuff for big meals. Everyone stares at you like your a pig because you're pushing around a 100-lb cart of grub. Oink.
Every one has their preference of hot pot ingredients. You can pretty much put anything in there. We ended up getting nappa cabbage, enoki/oyster/king/maitake mushrooms, egg dumplings, fish and pork balls, vermicelli, shrimp, tofu, quail eggs and about 6 lbs of meat for the 10 of us. I of course, bought way too much food. The nice thing about hot pot is that everything will be boiled and is pretty much good for you.
We had to kill some time to let the water boil in the 4 pots we had. I grabbed some of the fish balls we had and skewered them. I made a quick marinade using satay bbq sauce, soy sauce, white pepper, sugar and water and basted the fish balls. Threw them on the grill for a few minutes till they were lightly charred. Mmmm, these were so good. Just how I had them in Hong Kong.
While I grilled, I had a cool bottle of Taiwan Beer. I love the name - so simple and generic. Although the label proclaims it as World Class Beer, I think it's a little too light. Very crisp and refreshing though, like Korean Hite beer. This still tastes better than Tsingtao beer which I think of as bottled urine.
There are many different sauces you can use for the hot pot. I just do the cantonese style which is pretty much the same as the fishball marinade. I take 2-3 tablespoons of the satay bbq sauce and add one raw egg, soy sauce and a little sugar. Mix that up and you're good to go. For a nice kick, add thinly sliced green onions, cilantro and green chilis. So good! Hot pot can be done with plain old water. After about an hour of cooking the meats/seafood/veggies, you'll get a nice rich broth which can be seasoned with salt for soup. Talk about double dinner in one sitting. We just used a 1 can of chicken broth and 2 cans of water and added shrimp and daikon into the pot. You can start eating once the water boils.
Here are two of the three platters we compiled. The sliced beef, shrimp and vermicelli are not pictured.
Because we had four pots, we decided to designate two for the Lava Pot, also known as "Sichuan-style Hot Pot" (Ma-Lah-Huo-Guo). 'Ma' means numbing and 'lah' means spicy. And that's exactly what it is. Ladies and gentleman, you are looking at the inside of a volcano. Sichuan-style hot pot uses a lot of red chili peppers and spices. And lemme tell you, it's lethal. My friend and I took a whiff of the broth and immediately teared. Our nose hairs felt like they were just singed. Wow, some potent stuff. But it tasted fabulous. My friend W was at the market and didn't know which flavoring pack to buy and had to call his mom up. She told him to look for the bottle with the "ugly old woman" on it. Some of you may know about Chinese packaging. It's so vain of the creators to smack their face on the label. But thanks to the "ugly old woman", we loved it. The spiciness of her sauce must reflect her self-hatred for the lack of beauty. Caution: Sichuan-style hot pot will cause the "Ring of Fire" or "Sting Ring" if you know what I mean haha.
It was time to start and everyone dove in for the food. Within 15 minutes, you can hear people sniffling and see them wipe sweat off their foreheads. That Sichuan pot was destroying us. One of my friends filled up a 64-oz cup of water and I ended up refilling my water cup 3 times. After about 45 minutes, I started to slow down. My stomach was hurting with goodness and my mouth felt a little numb and swollen.I was starting to have the symptoms of "yeet hay" or "huo qi da" which literally means "hot air". Although there is no medical explanation for this in English, the term is widely-used in Chinese. Some people say it's similar to a canker sore but really it is an imbalance in the immune system. The Chinese believe in "yin and yang" which is the ideology that everything has a complementary opposite. And it applies to food as well. Ever eat fried chicken or something oily on a hot day? Yeah, you don't feel too good after that. Chinese will balance out a hot meal with a cold cup of tea and eat a cold meal when it's hot. Makes sense. They will rarely eat hot, fried food on a hot day. Symptoms of 'yeet hay' are bumps on the tongue and inside the mouth, sore throat and possibly bloody noses. Basically, this is a term that reminds people to keep a healthy diet, get lots of rest and do things in moderation. It made sense when I ate the food, it was just way too spicy and scalding-hot for me, but drinking water helped balance things out.
After the hot pot, we all sat down on the couch with food coma. It looked like a cemetary of gluttons. We stared at each other like zombies but it was ok, we just had great food. I love the feeling of eating something good and relaxing. That's what hot pot is all about. The whole meal cost about $180. MUCH cheaper than going out to a restaurant to eat. Hot pot is something usually done at home. Good seeing you guys! Thanks for reading.
Check out the Japanese version of hot pot done by Oishii Eats here - shabu shabu. It's good sh*t!
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