In Chengdu, the Not-Hot Pot Hot Pot

Let it be known that you are headed to Chengdu and you will be told: "Don't miss the hot pot!"

"Make time for hot pot!"

"Be sure to eat hot pot!"

"You gotta have hot pot!"

"I hear the hot pot's amazing!"

Hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot.

The truth? Sichuan-style hot pot, a variation on Mongolian hot pot or steamboat that replaces the boiling water in which various items are cooked with oil floating chilies and spices, is not Chengdu's culinary superstar.

Even though it was allegedly invented in Chongqing, hot pot is all over the place in Chengdu. Some streets are lined with what seems to be nothing but huge hot pot emporiums.

A variation on the hot pot theme is chuan-chuan. The name refers to the wooden sticks that ingredients are threaded on. The larger chuan-chuan restaurants are equipped with big walk-in refrigerators, from which you select from 30 or more skewered ingredients, piling the laden sticks up on cafeteria-style plastic trays. At the end of the meal your table is charged according to how many used sticks have accumulated in the container next to it.

Chuan-chuan is fun -- the perfect lazy-meal way to pass an evening with friends -- and it can be tasty and quite cheap. It's good post-bar hopping food, the way a Burger King whopper can be. But in the end, even if the ingredients are stellar, you're cooking them in a big vat of oil. And sometimes that oil has sinister origins, so when it comes to hot pot and chuan-chuan you really need to be careful where you eat. 

Still, the idea -- your own personal selection of ingredients cooked in liquid imbued with chilies and Sichuan peppercorns and other characteristic Sichuanese spices -- does hold great appeal.

Enter mao cai.

Think of mao cai as a single-serving personalized hot pot. The mao cai vendor -- like this woman, working out of a several meter-by-several meter shop in an alley in Chengdu -- has three essential pieces of equipment: a big-ass burner (here, fashioned from an oil drum), an equally large pot, and a handled sieve.

In the pot:broth topped with a thin skim of oil. This lady boils chilies, Sichuan peppercorns, cassia, bay leaves, false cardamom, ginger and other bits for two hours before opening shop.

Stacked on shelves inside the shop, a choice of ingredients:

sliced dried dofu - cucumber - winter melon - oyster mushrooms

bok choy - blood 'pudding' - konnyaku slices - rice 'jelly' noodles

bean sprouts - potato - lotus root

sweet potato noodles - strips of sea vegetable - wood ear fungus

Assembling your meal is as easy as pointing. She grabs a handful of whatever you choose to add to your mao cai, places it in her handled sieve, and lowers it -- each ingredient separately, to get the cooking time right -- into the bubbling cauldron, then deposits it into a bowl. At the end, it's all doused with a few ladles of fragrant broth. Black vinegar, soy sauce, and chili oil at the table are yours to add as you wish.

The end result is hot pot-ish but better. The same big flavor, the same unique-to-you selection of ingredients, but less greasy and easier to eat.

Heading to Chengdu? Skip the hot pot. But do learn to recognize the characters for mao cai:

 冒菜

 

 

 

Comments

[dena]

wow, another terrific post! i'm not even hungry, and i want some! beautiful photos...makes me want to go to china, just to find these places...

[felicia]

That looks delicious! I'm actually headed to Chengdu in December, so I'll be sure to remember to check 冒菜 out. It looks like it'll keep me warm.

[Reese]

Wow, the broth of mao cai sounds delish! I think I would get hungrier after each stick.

[cyn]

i love those big chunky strips of seaweed in the soup!

[vewe]

yummy...

MalaHuoGuo (HotPot) is my fave food of all time, but I'll make sure to try MaoCai next time if I visit Chengdu

[Elliott]

I live in Chengdu. Hot Pot is way overrated here. I prefer the non-Sichuanese broth versions. Here they reuse the oil from day to day, it's terribly unhealthy as you're consuming grease that's been aged for years probably, and the taste is meh. Cheers to someone brave enough to say it.

[macarons]

soup looks awesome! Would love to have some hot pot!

ryan

[Mr. Pineapple]

ooh that looks so good!! wanna try it!

[Ant Stone]

Are the Sichuan peppercorns the ones that leave your mouth feeling numb? I'm told they're to combat the chilli, but in my opinion they're horrible. It would literally ruin my mood to eat one when I visited in 2007.

Great post, I can feel the steam coming off my monitor.

[portable media players]

I've heard stories of Ma La broth being reused for years too...but this doesn't really seem to stop anyone from tucking in. IIRC, locals never drink the broth.

And it's the Sichuan Pepper (not a true pepper) that causes the numbing feel. Chili peppers cause only the burning sensation.

[Robyn]

Dena - thank you!

Felicia - definately will keep you warm. December temperatures will be perfect for eating in Chengdu. Enjoy!

cyn - yeah, the seaweed was great. We also saw strips of seaweed tossed with cold noodles at another place.

Elliot - ha ha. Thank you for that comment. Don't mind if I never have one again, actually. But definately more mao cai.

Ant - yes, those are the ones. It took me a couple wks to get used to Sichuan peppercorn when I lived there in the 80s but once you do they are really addictive. I suppose there are some who never take to them though. Maybe give them a few more tries?

[Kalyan]

A couple of good friends went to Chengdu from KL for the hot pot. They were underwhelmed too. They didn't find it spicy enough from what I gathered. I'll send them this link :)

[Account Deleted]

I want to try Mao Cai... Fantastic in for for me here. I'm going to Malaysia in 2 months.

[Yi]

Maocai is like the fast food version of a sit-down hotpot. When I was little I used to get this on my way home from school. It was cheap and fast.