Hot Pot: A Great Meal to Share with Loved Ones
Hot pot is a wonderful way to share a meal with loved ones and create a cozy atmosphere. It’s a great option for entertaining a large group of people, making it a perfect choice for your next social gathering.
In short, hot pot is just a pot of boiling broth in the center of the table with a large variety of ingredients (usually raw) laid out buffet-style that you use to cook in the broth on the fly.
Once the food has finished cooking, you scoop it out onto your bowl which will have a personalized dipping sauce that you created, and you eat it!
Use Portable Cookware and Place it in the Center of the Eating Area
- I highly recommend using an electric portable induction cooktop to do hot pot with. It’s easy to use, super quick to clean up, and safe to use.
- When using an induction stovetop, you’re going to want to make sure that your pot is magnetic.
- Alternatively, you can also use a portable gas butane stove as well.
- Last but not least, there are also portable electric hot plate burners as well, these are the least expensive option but they also take longer to heat up and are not as good at maintaining a consistent heat.
Once you have the cookware, you can use any type of pot. A very large stainless steel one works best. If you ever get serious about hot pot, you can even buy special pots dedicated to hot pot that have dividers in the middle that lets you have 2 different types of broth going at the same time!
Hot Pot Tools and Utensils
A very useful tool for hot pot is a hot pot strainer scoop – each person would get their own scoop at the table. This scoop is very helpful with fishing out slippery and hard-to-grab foods out of the pot and into your sauce bowl.
If you can’t find these mini hot pot scoops or you don’t want to purchase them, you can use a ladle with holes or a spaghetti/noodle ladle as well.
Other than the hot pot basket scoop, you can pretty much use any type of utensil you feel comfortable eating with such as wooden chopsticks or forks. If you plan on using metal utensils make sure you don’t use it to cook the food from the pot since metal conducts heat and it can get really hot.
Ideas for Hot Pot Soup Bases
Having a good soup base in the pot for cooking helps flavor the foods cooked within it so I highly recommend trying a few to see which ones you like!
A few common types to get you started that we like to use are:
- Chicken or beef broth – You can also use bouillons as well for this.
- Miso broth.
- Curry paste or Tom Yum paste broth – Add a scoop of curry paste or Tom yum paste to the pot of water and voila!
- Use instant hot pot broths. They are very common in Asian grocery stores and there are dozens of varieties to pick from. Just add it to the pot of water and you’re good to go!
- Once you found a broth you like, make it spicy! Add some hot sauce or chili oil into it!
Source: Chinese Hot Pot: A Step-by-Step Guide On How to Recreate It At Home
