Supper Partying: How To Throw a Proper Hotpot Party

On weekends in the winter, my mother would always ask us, “Ni yao xiang chi huo guo?” (“Would you like to eat hotpot?”). We’d visit the Asian supermarket in the morning and scour the frozen section, the produce aisle, the seafood counter and, on occasion, the beverage shelves. She’d spend the afternoon prepping: stacking sliced meat and fish balls on plates, cleaning prawns and butchering whole fish, and putting out sauces and chopped garlic for the condiment station. We’d make our dipping sauce, sit down at a table full of little plates of uncooked food and a large cauldron of rolling mala broth and eat until we were so full we had to lie down.

Sichuanese hotpot, unlike shabu shabu and Thai suki, is all about the very spicy, very mala (numbing) broth and the chunky, flavourful dipping sauce. This social eating experience scores the highest on the crowd-pleaser scale: the setting is fun and interactive, it has the best variety of foods and it’s very dietary-friendly. The only catch is, it should involve more than three people – any fewer and it’s not worth the huge shop.

The pot

I would never buy a pot for hotpot off the internet. (It’s hard to find one with good reviews and, in fact, most of them don’t have any reviews at all.) Instead, you can use a Dutch oven or clay pot like a donabe on a single-burner butane or portable induction stove. I have a plug-in yuanyang pot (a split pot for two different broths), but only because my family hauls kitchen appliances back home from China when we visit. If you do visit China, Hong Kong or Taiwan, it’s worth buying one – you will have it forever.

Good soup

I am certain there are people who spend days simmering bones to make a rich, complex broth for their hotpots. Kudos to them! I am not one of those people. Hotpot is a relatively low-effort dinner party food – between the plating and washing and cutting, there’s not much cooking to be done before the main event and that’s why I prefer to use store-bought hotpot bases. You can find them at any Asian supermarket, but there are far more flavour varieties (mala spicy, pork bone, tomato, seafood, mushroom, the list goes on) at Chinese-centric supermarkets. If you’re feeling extra, you can use boxed chicken or beef broth instead of water as the base and add some quartered spring onions, sliced tomato, jujubes and goji berries for a more authentic experience.

The ingredients

Whenever I go shopping for hotpot, I give myself at least 45 minutes to shop – that way it’s a meditative experience and I can better account for all my guests, especially if they have dietary requirements and I need to read ingredients lists. I aim for half vegetarian items (greens, tofu skins, potato noodles, kelp, etc.) and half meat (sliced lamb, fish balls, duck blood, beef tripe, and prawns, for example). If there’s a food item you’ve wanted to try, say, a new dumpling flavour, this is a great way to trial it.

For prep, I wash and cut up the greens and unpackage and plate everything. Make sure to plate the meat at the last minute – it looks better frozen and is easier to pick up with chopsticks.

Once everyone is seated and the broth is roiling, fill the pot with some of the ingredients that need a bit more time – mushrooms, frozen fish balls, lotus root – and, while they’re cooking, you can shuan (rinse, i.e. dip) the meat as it only takes around five seconds to cook. (Do not let go of the meat because it will become overcooked and chewy.) When most of the food is finished, this is when you should cook any noodles and greens. It’s best to leave them to the end because that’s when the broth is most flavourful.

The sauce

Toasted sesame oil is the foundation of Sichuanese hotpot sauce, so make sure there’s plenty to go around. My sauce station is all about balance and texture. Besides the sesame oil, I provide high quality light soy, black vinegar, finely chopped garlic, crushed peanuts, chopped coriander and spring onions, oyster sauce, lots of sesame paste (it’s similar to tahini but deeper in colour and flavour) and salt. Let your guests run wild with it and figure out what they like. Most importantly, keep the station topped up so people can replenish throughout the meal.

There are endless options for the sauce station, some expected (chopped fresh chilli) and others a bit freakier (barbecue sauce). If you’ve never done hotpot before and want to experiment with the breadth of condiments and toppings, go to a restaurant. The sauce station is an experience in and of itself.

Keep up with Becca over on @supper.partying