I’ve been to a Hot Pot restaurant once, but I made a mess of it because I didn’t know what I was doing. That’s why I was so excited when Buford Highway Farmers Market offered an evening class with the Chinese Southern Belles about Hot Pot.
Hot Pot is a popular winter family dinner in China. In this thousand year old tradition, one pot is shared by everyone at the table, so diners must cooperate. Chinese Southern Belle Natalie Keng explains that she uses Hot Pot as a team building exercise for that very reason. Hot pot is popular throughout Asia, so you may know it as Mongolian hot pot or Shabu Shabu (Japan).
Hot Pot has three components: broth, ingredients, noodles, and sauce.
Broth: We used electric pots, much like a large fondue pot, but propane or solid fuel pots are available too. Natalie adds only dried mushrooms, onion, salt and pepper to her water, but many restaurants will give you a choice of broths.
Ingredients: Choose what is fresh and slice it into bite sizes. This night we used carrots, radish, mung bean sprouts, and two kinds of greens. We had a variety of tofu choices--smoked, baked and plain. Meats were sliced thin to facilitate cooking. We also had frozen fish balls and frozen dumplings.
Sauce: Mix to your own taste in a soup bowl using items like soy, oyster, BBQ or chili sauces, chopped ginger and garlic, and sesame oil. As you remove items from the pot, drain them well and drop them directly into the bowl of sauce to coat before eating.
Noodles: Just pick your favorite. We had fresh frozen wheat noodles.
Eating: feed the pot, let it come to a boil, eat. We started with the frozen fish balls and dumplings, with about half the vegetables. Once the broth came to a boil again we used a strainer to get our first “course.” Second course, tofu and bean sprouts. For a third we added meat with the rest of the vegetables. Finally, the noodles which cook very quickly in the now flavorful broth. It’s easy once you know the system.
You can buy hot pots for home cooking at BHFM or try a restaurant. Two are located in the China Town Mall on New Peachtree: Hot Pot 101 and the Hot Pot stall at the food court.
Comments