Hotpot lacks ‘cultural significance’? The convivial dish has been bringing people together for some 900 years in China
The popular winter dish, recently slammed by Hong Kong food critic Chua Lam for requiring little skill in its preparation, was first described by a scholar of the Southern Song dynasty
The famous Singapore-born, Hong Kong-based food critic Chua Lam enraged many earlier this month when he said that hotpot was the dish he’d like to see disappear from the face of the earth during an appearance on a talk show in mainland China. According to Chua, hotpot “lacked cultural significance”, requiring little skill in its preparation. Many disagreed with him on social media, some belligerently so, as is the wont of keyboard warriors.
I used to hate hotpot because I could never enjoy it in hot and humid Singapore, even in air-conditioned restaurants. Now, I only have hotpot in the cold months in China, as it should be. Another reason for my ambivalence towards the dish is the indiscriminate melange of ingredients that goes into it, which is the norm these days. Halfway into a hotpot meal, with my taste buds battered by the umami avalanche, I often can’t tell if it’s beef, mutton or something else that I’m eating. Cross-contamination is another issue, either from improperly cooked food or a fellow diner hosting a buffet of nasty germs and viruses.
‘Food God’ slams hotpot, wishes it would disappear; rage boils over
While there are several terse records dating back to ancient times about cooking foods in boiling water, the first actual depiction of a hotpot meal that we would recognise today was written in the early Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) and was penned by the scholar Lin Hong.
In “Pure Supplies of People in the Mountains”, which is a recipe book, nutrition guide and travelogue rolled into one, the Fujian native describes catching a rabbit during a winter visit to a hermit in the province’s Wuyi Mountains. There was no cook at the hermitage to prepare the meat, but the hermit said: “In the mountains, one cuts the meat into thin slices and marinates them in wine, sauce and pepper. Place a pot on a tea brazier, fill it half with water and wait for it to come to a rolling boil. After enjoying a cup of wine, each person picks up a slice of meat with his chopsticks, holds it in the boiling water, and when it is cooked, eats it.”
Lin Hong writes that this manner of eating was pleasurable for its conviviality and bracing warmth in cold weather, and that pork and mutton could also be used. He encountered the same type of meal again five or six years later in an impoverished scholar’s home in the capital Hangzhou.
At its essence, that meal up in the mountains some 900 years ago has remained unchanged, but where it was simple, frugal and light on the palate, a typical hotpot today is a veritable orgy of processed foods, mounds of meat and seafood, and soups so laden with oil, chilli peppers and MSG that they leave one with a raging thirst and wretched guts afterwards.
But it does not have to be so. The nature of the dish allows one to choose how they want it to be. If, like me, you prefer a lighter flavour, avoid the all-you-can-eat hotpot palaces and refrain from dumping all manner of ingredients into your pot like a witch at her cauldron. Use a very light broth or even water, add lots of vegetables, and confine yourself to one type of meat or seafood for a more defined taste. Sip a glass of baijiu at intervals. Enjoy.
