~ Hot Pot ~

I love hot pot. It's so much fun to sit around and cook and eat together. For those of you who has never had hot pot, it's just like fondue, but Chinese style. Usually there's 1 shallow pot with boiling soup and lots of different kinds of raw meat, seafood and veggies on the side. Then, you pick what you want, put it in the soup to cook and take it back out to eat it. You will also have sauce in your bowl to season the food.

Here, we have pig skin, all kinds of fish balls, crab meat, beef, tofu, oyster, squid, thinly sliced pork belly, turnip, peapods and crabs. There was also shrimp, lettuce, chicken and more! My dad usually prepares more seafood than other people I know. He also has more variety. When I do hot pot myself, I probably only have half of that stuff because I am....lazy :)

Look at these fat crabs! It was on sale at QMart (the local international grocery store) for $0.79/lb!

A closer look at the fish balls. Oh yeah, there were those fried tofu puffs too. Usually, I just get the thinly sliced fat beef from the store. It's so good, yet so bad. But, my dad likes to cut his own beef.

We got a special pot for hot pot so that we can have two different soup bases. Usually, we do one with chicken soup and the other one is super spicy soup base we get at the stores. They make soup base packets just for hot pot. See the redness? It's even spicier than it looks!

For the sauce, we like to mix this "bbq sauce" with soy sauce. Some of the boys also put a raw egg in there. And hot sauce too. I have seen fermented tofu sauce, hot sauce, garlic sauce, peanut sauce and more. Every family has their own style.

Yum! Hot pot is one of the best things about winter! It's healthy. It's warm. It's fun. This hot pot was a good start for this year. There will be plenty more later! I am excited!