Hot Pot!!!!

I guess spending my thanksgiving break in Florida was not a good idea before all my final exams. The sunshine and weather was amazing, I couldn’t concentrate on any homework after I drove back to Atlanta. The weather in Atlanta is cold, so I decided to eat hot pot with my friends the Sunday after the football game. Hot pot is a well-known cuisine all over China. As the name hot pot implied, the cuisine is simply a pot of boiled liquid to cook meat and vegetables. However, there are many unique aspects and details of the cuisine. The word hot implies the cuisine is spicy, the soup normally is covered with red pepper, and other various spice, and of course, a layer of hot oil. I grow up in the south part of China, very close to Sichuang province, the origin of hot pot. Therefore, I love eating spicy food. In addition to the spicy soup used to cook all the food, there are also going to have many dipping sauces on the side. Normally, the dipping sauce will be soy sauce, red pepper fried in oil, garlic, ginger, green onions, and sesames. I mean, I love to eat spicy hot pot, the level of hotness is not general Americans can tolerate. Since not all my friends can tolerate the level of hotness as I can, so I decided to make a soup that’s half and half, half spicy, and half none-spicy. The spices were purchased from the farmer market, which is a large Asian supermarket. The food we purchased were including fried tofu, bokcohi, ham, beef, lamb, tofu skin, mushroom, and noodles. The cooking process was easy, boil the soup, then start putting the food into the soup to let it cooked. Until it was cooked, you can start eating, and can dip the food into the dipping sauce. It was tasty and delicious. Another aspect besides eating the food in the hot pot is the atmosphere around the hot pot table. Normally a group of friends, family members are sitting around the table and talk to each other, share the stories. Especially in cold wintertime, the steam come off from the hot pot and the excitement of being with friends and family members enhanced the entire hot pot eating experience.

Hot pot sounds very Asiatic to the American people, but I would definitely recommended to the western publics. Just look at my pictures, you know you want to eat it in the wintertime.