Hot Pot Style of Eating and Cooking : Hot Pot and Foods That Can be Cooked with Hot Pot

I used to eat at Chinese restaurants and always there is a hot pot in the middle of the table where you can cook the food you like while you are eating at the table with other people, usually your friends, relatives or acquaintances.

Hot pot is simply cooking foods, stew foods meat or vegetables and then you dip it in a sauce. This style of cooking is very famous in East Asia -- China, Taiwan and Japan most specially.

Hot pot cooking and eating is a venue for family and friends to gather together to share -- this is good for updating each other about each personal things -- conversations while the food is cooking.

Hot pot cooking and eating is usually for semi formal gathering of relatives friends and acquaintances. However in winter, hot pot cooking is usually done.

Hot Pot was introduced in China in the 6th to 8th AD to take care of people because of the cold winter, they needed something hot to eat. During the Tang Dynasty, the southern part of China was influenced by the hot pot style of cooking, then it spread across the country, then to neighboring countries -- Eastern countries like Japan, Taiwan (Taiwan cuisine is greatly influenced by Japanese cuisine in general). There emerged different variations of hot pot style of cooking like :

• Japanese -sukiyaki beef hot pot and shabu shabu same as in Taiwan
• Sichuan, China -
  
• Thailand hot pot
• Singapore hot pot
  
• Hong Kong hot pot
  
• China hot pot
  
• Manchurian hot pot
  
• Vietnamese hot pot

See the video below for the information.

There are variations in the condiments and seasoning, plus broth and food

Basic stock of hot pot is dependent on water, soup base (your choice) and the salt

Usually you will need a cooking pot situated in the middle of the table for everybody to reach out and put the raw food of their choice. The cooking pot will utilized by propane gas, electricity or charcoal. You can use metal for the pot or ceramics, or clay pot. I prefer this one, it tastes good and flavorful when you cooked in clay pot.

The meat should be thinly sliced as when the broth which is boiling is good for the meat to be cooked immediately. The raw vegetables should be cut in appropriate sizes.

Chopstick is needed when you dropped the uncooked foods at the hot pot.

You can prepare sauce for the food prior to cooking hot pot style.

Meat

• meat balls like beef balls and trife, pork and chicken -- thinly sliced

• fish balls
• eggs

Fishes and seafoods

• shrimp
• scallops
• mussels

Vegetables

• like cabbage
  
• Tofu
• spinach
• ginger
• tomatoes
  

Noodles -- Chinese, Ramen egg noodle, rice noodle, buckwheat noodle

Mushroom -- different kinds of mushroom

You will need a chopstick, a bowl if you want to eat the soup (broth), put the preferred vegetables or meat then scoop it in your plate and eat it. You can dip it in the sauce first,

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