Chinese hot pot

[Yemyem]

Hi all! Hope you guys can help me. I was curious as to what i would need for chinese hot pot? Is it similar to shabu shabu? I remember eating it when I was a young little thing, but all I can really remember is the tripe (my fav!)

Any suggestions on what other ingredients to get or what kind of broth it has to be? All suggestions are greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

[annachan]

It is very similar to shabu shabu. You can go fancy with the broth. But at home, we just use store bought chicken broth. We usually add a few slices of ginger and some vegetables like napa cabbage. You can now buy spicy broth and such at the Asian markets.

As for ingredients, you can use anything you like. We usually have a few choices of meat (chicken, pork, beef, lamb), some meat/fish balls, innards (tripe, intestine, liver, etc.), seafood (squid, shrimp, clam, scallop, mussel), vegetables (different varieties of mushroom, leafy greens, taro) and tofu. You can also cook different types of noodle and dumpling/wonton.

The other major component is the dipping sauce. You can make it any way you like it. We usually have the following ingredients out for folks to customize the sauce. Raw eggs, soy sauce, hot sauce/oil, garlic, ginger, sesame oil and satay sauce (not the peanut version - sometimes called BBQ sauce). Depending on your taste, you may have other condiments available.

The best part for me is always the soup at the end. All the flavor from the ingredients cooked in the broth are concentrated in it.

[Magictofu]

There are different style of chinese hot pot. Our favourite is sichuan style with a very spicy broth using a lot of chiles and sichuan pepper. We usually have two broth, the hot 'mala' broth just described here and another one, typically chicken broth with lemon.

We particularly like using lamb and rolled up "tofu skin" in our hot pot.