No Half Measures

12 Oct 2023

In college, we were introduced to hot pot. A spread of raw ingredients surrounding a tabletop burner and two broths, one savory and one spicy. We’ve gotten people together several times to enjoy it, serving sticky rice alongside the spread.

For this particular time, we needed to make the broths gluten-free, which means completely homemade! Most Asian ingredients use wheat extensively, even in surprising places like fermented soy beans.

For the spicy broth I started wiht this Sichuan hot pot soup base recipe, and I followed this guide to help find gluten-free ingredients. For the sichuan base, I had to find GF doubanjiang and Shaoxing wine. For the doubanjiang, I started researching GF fermented bean paste, but lucikly I found this Spicy Hot Sauce that was made from fermented soybeans and only listed soy as an allergen. This isn’t foolproof, but my dinner guest was sensitive to wheat instead of having Celiac.

The rice wine that I already had is listed as GF, so I just used that. It’s not the same as Shaoxing cooking wine, but since wheat is used in the fermentation process I didn’t expect to find a GF version.

The recipe says that this makes four hot pot soup bases - for our crowd, I used 1/6th of the mix this time and 1/6th of the mix another time, and both times that was definitely too spicy. When I froze the base, I divided it by half again, so I ended up with 8 soup base portions.

Now for the non-spicy, savory base I followed this vegetarian recipe, which was easy to make GF by using the rice cooking wine instead of Shaoxing wine.

For deciding on ingredients, I read this guide to hot pot ingredients. Here are what we’ve tried and my notes.

Protein

• Thin sliced brisket: you’re only supposed to cook this for 8 seconds in boiling broth and we always forget it for too long so it ends up being tough. I’m sure it’s delicious, but requires good management.
• Beef short ribs: because of our experience with the brisket, we opted for cubes. This was delicious, and they could be forgotten for a bit without risking them getting tough.
• Sliced pork belly: much the same experience as the brisket, it ends up getting too tough. We should try cubes.
• Sliced chicken: if you can get it thin, it’s pretty good. We could try cubes.

Leafy vegetables

• Napa cabbage: delicous, crunchy, and picks up the flavor really well
• Yu choy/bok choy: the leafy side gets wilty if you cook it too long, but it’s delicous
• Broccoli: you can add any veggie to hot pot, and this is a reliable option that soaks up broth well

Hardy vegetables

• Purple yam: cut into cubes, it can rest at the bottom of the pot and will be delightful when you find it
• Taro: also cubed, same deliciousness
• Lotus root: I sliced these, and they were a nice contrast to the other starchy options
• Potato: a good standby
• Edamame: we eat a lot of this, so adding it to hot pot was a natural choice and it does pretty well

Mushrooms

• Oyster mushrooms: mushrooms aren’t my absolute favorite, but they add a variety of texture that you can’t get anywhere else
• Enoki: Same! And they soak up flavor really well

Extras

• Fried bean curd rolls: fun and tasty
• Squid balls: I wouldn’t have picked these, but they were actually pretty good
• Beef ball: these are one of my favorites! They absorb both broths wonderfully, and they don’t get tough. The texture is like the beef balls in phở, which I love
• Frozen tofu: this one is fun. It absorbs broth well, and the porousness from freezing makes it feel lighter than otherwise

Starches

• Sticky rice aka glutinous rice: We always make this, it is very filling, and it absorbs broth well.
• Glass noodles: these are a great base starch
• Ramen: this is an easy option, and pretty good. I would choose bean thread noodles, but not bad

Here’s one of our spreads!

To make the broth, I just added vegetable stock to the Sichuan base, and poured in the savory broth to let them heat. As they cooked, I think I added more broth to each to keep the volume up.

And there we go! This is such an enjoyable meal, because you get to spend time talking while the ingredients cook and it’s a very relaxing pace.