So this was my Thanksgiving dinner! Doesn't look like the typical turkey dinner, does it?Definitely not...this is the Chinese hotpot. (Hehe that rhymes!) I did some research online about the history; it actually goes back to about a 1000 years in ancient China. It was first invented by the Mongol warriors; they would use their helmets to cook meals. Later, during the Tang Dynasty, the method spread to northern China. Hotpot became popular in all of China by the Qing Dynasty.
All you need is a cooking pot (like in the picture), water, sauce (which I'll describe later), and the actual stuff you want to eat. The most common things people eat for hotpot is vegetables (cabbage, other Chinese veggies), thin slices of beef or pork, tofu, mushrooms (eeew, they're gross), seafood, wontons, dumplings, noodles, and meatballs (fishballs/beefballs, NOT the spaghetti type of meatballs).
Basically, all you do when you eat hotpot is drop the raw food into the boiling water, then take it out when it's cooked. It's actually the same as plain-old boiling the food. But people love it because it's very festive; everyone has to gather around the pot and cook their own food. Sometimes, you put something in to cook and someone else steals it. :P So just the cooking part is already very entertaining in itself. It's especially nice during the winter when it's cold. :)
Nobody likes eating everything plain though; then the food would be tasteless. D: That's why we have SAUCE!
Everyone mixes their own sauce like how they have to cook their own food. After all, everyone has their own preferences.
All you have to do is take common sauces that you like (soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, satay sauce, etc.) and mix them together. In my opinion, the must-have's in a good sauce are: satay sauce, soy sauce, and either sesame or peanut oil. :)
Well, now that you know something about Chinese hotpot, you can try it yourself some day! After all, Thanksgiving dinner doesn't always have to be just turkey and mashed potatoes. ;P
