Hot Pot: a thousand-year-old Chinese tradition

I'm happy I finally get to write about hot pot, I've been wanting to introduce you to the hot pot culture for quite a long time now, but I always had other posts I ended up gaving preference to. But finally here it is, a post on one of China's most popular dishes: hot pot. The reason why I never found the appropriate moment to post about it is simply because I don't like hot pot. But hey, that I don't like something doesn't mean millions of Chinese haven't been raging about it for more than a thousand years! So here is a post that will give you a glimpse on what hot pot is, in case you never heard about it before!

The principle of hot pot is very simple: it consists of a pot with simmering broth placed in the middle the table, where sliced meat, vegetables, mushrooms, tofu, dumplings, noodles, seafood or fish skin are thrown in uncooked to be boiled. The most typical broths are the clear and the spicy one (in the pictures), but other flavors like satay or tomato are also available.

Hot pot is one of J's favorite meals, and last saturday for his birthday we went to China for it. There's plenty of hot pot restaurants in Hong Kong, but he always says the best of the best is Little Sheep from mainland China. Founded in 1999 in Inner Mongolia, Little Sheep currently has 300 branches worldwide, most of them in mainland China, but also in Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the United States (a branch in NY and a branch in California!). I didn't take the camera with me this time but I had taken pictures of another branch in Guangzhou a couple of months ago, so here they are!

It's typical for hot pot to be accompanied with soy sauce and other condiments but Little Sheep won't give any to its customers. They claim their food is so tasty, dipping it in sauce would ruin its amazing flavor. Even though beef is probably the most common meat for hot pot, the most popular one at Little Sheep is obviously... lamb {dah!}.

Have you ever had hot pot? How did you like it?