Hot Pot! 火锅Aka Huǒguō, aka to “Dah Beeno”
dried chillies |
You can use a wok on a portable
hotplate or even a large rice cooker with a lift off lid, or I use a slow
cooker/crock pot.
Stock:
Use a large stock pot or a wok to
make your basic stock. This doesn’t have to be authentic, go for flavours you
enjoy. Make vegetable stock with some leeks, carrots, celery and vegetable scraps from preparing your
vegetables for the main event (I even throw potato peelings, carrot peelings
etc.), cooked for at least an hour, then strain the vegetables out. Make enough
to fill your stock pot – it doesn’t matter if this is more than your hotpot can
contain as you will need to top the hotpot up during the evening anyway. Add a
stock cube or some spoonfuls of bouillon so that the stock is tasty but not too
salty.
You can add dried Chinese mushrooms
to the stock for a rich flavour; when you fish out spent vegetables from your
base broth these can be kept in as they are great to eat later.
You can also add miso to your stock
for an extra “umami” flavour.
Once you have a basic stock you can
add different flavours.
One I’ve used before is a curry laksa
type stock base. 5 tbsp of red curry paste (more if the paste isn’t that
concentrated), fried in 1 tsp oil, with 20 cm ginger, sliced. Then add a tin of
coconut milk, and 2 – 3 strips of
lemon/lime zest and then topped up with stock. Add 1/3 cup of nutritional yeast
and some soya sauce to taste.
Spicy Sichuan style: Fry about 8/9
whole chillies, 2 tsp Sichuan peppercorns, with 1 tbsp chilli bean sauce in 1 tbsp oil until toasted, then add the
stock. You can top this up with chilli oil if this isn’t fiery enough for you!
Don’t stress about your stock too
much, if it tastes nice to you, great. During the course of the evening your
guests are going to add loads of vegetables, tofu, noodles, dumplings etc to
the pot, and the stock gets more and more flavoursome as the evening goes on.
Plus, they are going add lots of different sauces to their own food, which adds
even more flavour.
Have a range of different sauces
available. Sauces that have proved popular:
Satay Sauce,
Sriracha, Soy Sauce – both light and
dark,
Sesame paste/tahini with a layer of
sesame oil
Sesame oil with ½ tsp of minced
garlic
Chilli oil with black vinegar
Sweet chilli sauce/Chilli bean paste
Vegetarian oyster sauce/vegetarian XO
sauce
Garnishes: a dish of chopped scallions, a dish of chopped
coriander
Things to go in the hotpot:
Buy as much as you think you and your
guests will eat and choose whatever suits you.
Chinese vegetables: e.g. bak choi, Chinese (napa) cabbage, (can use choi
sum, etc. instead)
carrots cut into 1cm slices, ½ a
rutabaga/swede cut into 1cm slices in various shapes or some pumpkin/squash.
a daikon radish/mooli peeled and
sliced into 1.5 cm slices.
Mange tout, sugar snap peas, baby
corn
Large bunch of coriander/cilantro
works well as a cooked vegetable
Fresh (and dried if you have them)
shitake mushrooms
Enogi mushrooms
Tofu, cubed and deep fried. Can be
bought ready fried in Chinese supermarket.
Hot dog sausages are strangely
popular in Chinese hotpot in China (mind you, so is pig’s intestine). Cut your
(vegan) hotdogs up – last time we had them whole, one slid out of my bowl like
a seal off a rock and jumped right back into the hotpot.
Noodles:
Udon – thick wheat noodles, really “meaty”
and chewy. They come dried or come in small vacuum packs.
Tools
Chopsticks and small individual bowls
for all.
Tongs, pasta spoon (the ones to dish
up spaghetti), slotted spoons are things that are necessary to get things out
once they are cooked.
The ritual
Hot pot takes time so is best done on a day off as you’ll need the day to
prepare, or pre-prepare the stock, and vegetables the night before.
Cut grooves lengthwise into your carrots, daikon radishes, then slice. |
Pre-prepare your vegetables in advance. I cut my daikon radish, carrots,
potatoes, swede/rutabaga into cutesy little shapes as it adds a little
decorative element, see pictures. You can also use cookie cutters in various
shapes – any leftover trimmings can be added to your stock, so no waste here. I
keep the vegetables sealed in plastic boxes and bring them to the table. This
is pretty informal fare so boxes are fine at the dinner table.
Set up your table with your sauces, vegetables, and the stock pot in the
middle. You will need an extension cord. Once your guests are ready get the
stock boiling. You might want to play mum and put in stuff to get things
started, e.g. potatoes and carrots and other vegetables that take a long time
to cook. Then people can put their own things in.
Everyone cooks, makes up their own sauce in their bowls, then pulls
cooked food out dips it in their sauce, adds garnish if wanted and eats.
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