Hated it for like 10 years. Now I love it. All my Taiwanese friends make that their top suggestion whenever they propose a meal with me. Any meal where you can get double portions of fish jiaozi is a good meal in my book.
What I can’t stand is soup noodles. I always do the rice option with huoguo, not the noodles.
YES!!! The key thing is the dipping sauce. If you dont get it right, its all fairly bland! If I can get a fairly intense combination of garlic/chilli/satay/vinegar then i will enjoy it. Otherwise its a bit “meh”
My wife loves shabu shabu, whereas I think it’s just ok. The sauce is what makes the food taste good.
Agree with Pqkdzrwt. You need to create the right dipping sauce. My friend makes an awesome dipping sauce. But I learned how to create my own after a while. I am a big fan of hot pot. It’s always has to be spicy. And yea, every now and then, I get the runs, but I don’t care. The food is delicious.
It’s good if you make a rich stock which you would enjoy drinking plain, like a chicken broth, then upgrade your ingredients to things like spicy meatballs, king prawns etc., have several different spicy sauces ready, and have it on a bone-chilling winter day along with some grilled sides like roasted veggies (e.g. bell peppers, corn, etc.). But just boiling everything in the watery hotpot stocks with bland fish-paste ingredients and using canned sauce? Entirely unexciting.
I like to fry some onions in the pan first, then water is enough. A tomato or two goes in. Pumpkin and taro, they take a while to cook. Good to fry the taro first a bit if you can. Other stuff mostly just gets cooked in a few secs. A piece of tomato is good mixed up in the sauce. Looking forward to winter now lol
There’s a great one in Zhuwei that has some of the best broths. My favorites are their Indian-style curry broth and the pumpkin soup broth. They are so good we’ll usually get any leftover broth bagged and take it home for a soup lunch the next day.
where’s that, cfiimages? I thought I knew all the hotpots in ZhuWei.
I’m still not sold on hotpots. We went last week for lunch in Taichung, and it was too much food. We’d only had breakfast 3 hours earlier.
I’m definitely not keen on milk hotpots (yes, they exist). Dump your veggies and meat into the bubbling milk and away you go.
[quote=“Nuit”]I’m still not sold on hotpots. We went last week for lunch in Taichung, and it was too much food. We’d only had breakfast 3 hours earlier.
I’m definitely not keen on milk hotpots (yes, they exist). Dump your veggies and meat into the bubbling milk and away you go.[/quote]
Amen to this.
I respect everyone’s opinions and I always go if Taiwanese are adamant about going. I definitley have never really enjoyed it. I always feel so greasy afterwards, like I entered some sort of greasy sauna.
Its not greasy if you put no meat in yours I think.
Not a big hotpot fan. The two that I like are the curry hotpots and the super spicy ones (the trick is to have a dipping sauce almost entirely composed of sesame oil and vinegar; they seem to negate the spiciness O.o;), the rest I can do without.
Much prefer the barbecue places. Those are awesome.
EDIT: What’s up with people putting EVERYTHING in the damn pot and then waiting forever for it to cook, though? I always stop the waitress and do it myself bit by bit. As a result I wait like 2 minutes before I can start eating compared to whichever local I’m with, who put it ALL IN THE POT AT ONCE and now has to wait about 10 minutes.
Finding it really difficult to master the hotpot tbh.
They just give a massive lump of generic vegetables, and I don’t like an overload of the brown sludge they give you for the sauce.
Not into hotpot meals at all. And long meals lasting up to two hours just don’t work with our very active 7-year-old.
Hotpot season us upon us, though, and I guess I’ll be forced by my wife and daughter to go a few times.
I avoided going to them for years, but I’ve gotten to like the all you can eat one Guo Ba on the corner of Xinyi and Jinshan. They have everything, good quality, and reasonable IMO. Make a res
I’ve tried all types and all different price ranges. Good but not great and never a first choice for me. Now my strategy is to make sure beer is sold and get most of my enjoyment from that.
I can recommend Wu Lao for those who aren’t sold on the standard huo guo. It’s a richer, spiced stock (Northern China style?), the ingredients are top-quality, and you can pick and choose what you want. Not cheap, but it’s good stuff.
I agree with multiple posters that mention how going out and paying, you expect that the food be prepared for you. Now you want me to pay you more than average (250+) AND want me to cook!? It should be cheaper than your average meal (<150) if you’re working less.
As for the taste - it’s ok. I hate milk soups and a lot of the crap that small shops stuff in there (年糕 or fish based things). If I have to go, I’d rather choose 肉多多 where it’s just a tonne of meat and some basic vegetables. Also these joins usually have unlimited icecream which is nice.
I like hot pot. I can understand why foreigners aren’t typically fond of it, but I enjoy it any time of year. Especially the nice places that give you a whole set, complete with appetizer, dessert, and drink.
Probably because foreigners don’t typically enjoy sitting around a table for three hours watching friends/acquaintances/work colleagues playing with their phones. It’s just not much of a barrel of laughs.
I don’t particularly like hotpot, but when I’m forced to go, I hit all the expensive stuff: prawns, oysters, etc. Can’t see the point of going out to eat boiled cabbage and pumpkin.
And I only like the places that have extras, like sushi, sashimi, pasta. That’s what I load up on.
I’m always aghast at people who go to expensive buffets, and spend their time chomping at cabbage, rice and watermelon.
Guy