Sichuan Hot Pot
Sichuan's communal pot: a deep-red broth of doubanjiang, Sichuan peppercorns and dried chillies bubbling at the table. Diners cook their own meat and greens.
Overview
Two pots if you have them: a spicy red broth and a clear chicken broth. The red broth fries doubanjiang and chilli bean paste in beef tallow, adds Sichuan peppercorns, dried chillies, star anise, cassia, bay, ginger and garlic, then stock; simmers for 30 minutes. Diners cook their own ingredients in the simmering pot and dip in a small bowl of sesame oil + chopped garlic + coriander. The mala (numbing-hot) sensation comes from green Sichuan peppercorns + dried chilli together.
Ingredients
Spicy red broth
- 100 g beef tallow (or rendered lard, or 100 ml vegetable oil)
- 6 tablespoons doubanjiang (Pixian fermented broad-bean paste)
- 2 tablespoons gochujang (or chilli bean sauce, optional, extra heat)
- 30 g dried Sichuan red chillies (de-stemmed)
- 3 tablespoons Sichuan peppercorns (mix of red and green if you can)
- 2 star anise
- 1 piece cassia bark (or 1 stick cinnamon)
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 thumb fresh ginger (sliced)
- 6 garlic cloves (smashed)
- 4 spring onions (cut into 5 cm lengths)
- 1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine
- 2 ½ litres unsalted chicken (or beef stock)
- 2 tablespoons rock sugar (or 1 tablespoon caster sugar)
- 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt (to taste)
Clear broth (optional, for those who can't take the heat)
- 1 ½ litres chicken stock
- 4 slices ginger
- 2 spring onions
- 4 dried jujubes (red dates, optional)
- ½ teaspoon salt
Cook-yourself ingredients (pick a selection)
- 400 g thinly sliced beef (sirloin, brisket - frozen 1 hour then sliced paper-thin)
- 300 g thinly sliced lamb
- 200 g raw shell-off prawns
- 200 g firm tofu (cubed)
- 200 g enoki mushrooms
- 200 g shiitake mushrooms (sliced)
- 200 g lotus root (peeled, sliced thin)
- 1 large bunch bok choy (or napa cabbage)
- 1 large bunch sweet potato glass noodles (soaked in warm water 10 min)
- 200 g fish balls (or processed Asian seafood balls)
Dipping sauce (per diner)
- 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
- 1 garlic clove (very finely chopped)
- 1 tablespoon chopped coriander
- 1 teaspoon Chinese chinkiang vinegar
- ½ teaspoon chilli oil (optional)
Method
Stage 1 - Toast spices
- In a wide heavy pot, melt the beef tallow over medium heat.
- Add Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, cassia, bay; toast 1 minute.
- Add dried chillies; toast 30 seconds (don't burn).
Stage 2 - Aromatics
- Add ginger, garlic, spring onions; cook 2 minutes.
Stage 3 - Pastes
- Reduce heat to medium-low. Add doubanjiang (and gochujang if using); cook 5 minutes, stirring, until the oil splits and turns deep red.
Stage 4 - Simmer
- Pour in Shaoxing wine; let sizzle 30 seconds.
- Add stock, rock sugar, dark soy, salt.
- Bring to a simmer; cook 30 minutes covered.
Stage 5 - Clear broth (parallel)
- If using, simmer chicken stock with ginger, spring onions and jujubes 20 minutes; season with salt.
Stage 6 - Set the table
- Arrange the raw ingredients on platters around the table.
- Pour the broth(s) into a hot pot pan over a portable burner at the centre.
- Each diner gets a small bowl with dipping sauce ingredients mixed.
Stage 7 - Cook
- Each diner picks raw ingredients with chopsticks; drops into the simmering broth; cooks until just done (30-90 seconds for thin meats, 2-3 minutes for tofu/mushrooms).
- Dip in sesame sauce; eat.
- Keep the broth simmering throughout.
Stage 8 - Finish
- The last course is often noodles cooked in the now-flavoured broth, served as a soup at the end.
Notes
- Mala = numbing + hot: The combination of Sichuan peppercorn (numbing) + dried chilli (hot) is the dish's identity. Don't reduce either to fix balance.
- Doubanjiang quality: Pixian doubanjiang (Sichuan fermented broad-bean paste, sold in jars at Chinese shops) is essential. Without it the broth lacks depth.
- Two-pot setup: Yin-yang pot lets some diners pick the clear side. A single pot works fine if everyone's in for the heat.
Storage
- The leftover broth keeps 4 days refrigerated; freezes 3 months. Strain out solids before storing; reuse as a soup base.
More like this
Mala Dry-Pot (Ganguo)
Ganguo, literally "dry pot", is the dry sister of hotpot. Where hotpot is a communal soup simmered at the table, dry pot is a wok composition: each ingredient pre-cooked separately, then everything tossed together at the last moment in a fragrant mala sauce based on Pixian doubanjiang, fermented black beans and chilli oil. The result lands somewhere between a stir-fry, a casserole and a giant heap of bar snacks. The dish is usually credited to Chongqing in the 1990s and exploded into nationwide popularity in the 2000s; it now anchors the menu of countless ganguo restaurants where you point at ingredients on a fridge and they appear minutes later in a single-handled wok at your table. Difficulty for a home cook is low if you accept the rhythm: blanch the vegetables, sear the proteins, then build the final dish from already-cooked components. The trick is restraint with the sauce, generous heat under the wok, and the willingness to commit to a long ingredient list. The recipe is endlessly flexible: lotus root, potato, cauliflower, mushrooms, squid, chicken wings, beef, fish balls, tofu skin, whatever you have, in any combination, totalling 1-1 ½ kg.
Kung Pao Shrimp
Kung pao (gongbao) shrimp is the seafood cousin of the classic Sichuan gongbao jiding, named for the 19th-century governor-general Ding Baozhen whose title was Gong Bao. Where the chicken version uses diced meat, the shrimp version keeps the prawns whole or halved so they curl into bright pink commas around the chillies and peanuts. The flavour profile is the signature Sichuan "lychee" balance: a touch of sweetness from sugar, sourness from black vinegar, salt and umami from soy, and the warm tingle (ma la) of toasted Sichuan peppercorn paired with the smoky bite of dried er jing tiao chillies. This is a fast dish, fundamentally a wok exercise: every ingredient must be prepped and lined up before the heat goes on, because once the chillies hit the oil you have maybe ninety seconds before everything is overcooked. Difficulty is moderate for a home cook with a working wok and high burner; the trick is keeping the chillies dark red and fragrant without scorching them black, and pulling the shrimp out the moment they curl. Served over plain rice it is one of the most rewarding ten-minute meals in the repertoire.
Mapo Tofu
Silken tofu cubes are blanched briefly in salted water (firms slightly and seasons). Pork mince is fried hard in oil; doubanjiang and douchi join, cooking to release oil; garlic, ginger, chilli flakes and ground Sichuan peppercorn are toasted briefly. Stock is poured in; tofu is slipped in; gentle simmer for 5 minutes; cornflour slurry thickens. Spring onions and a final dusting of ground Sichuan peppercorn finish.
Shuizhu Niurou
Two sensations at once: the bright, immediate burn of dried chilli (la) sitting under the slow numbing-electric prickle of Sichuan peppercorn (ma). That mala pair is the whole point. Beneath that, the broth is salty and fermented-funky from doubanjiang, the deep umami of broad-bean paste that's been aged for months in clay vessels. The hot oil pour at the table is theatre but it does real work: it blooms the dried chillies and Sichuan peppercorn powder right before you smell them, so the aroma arrives in a wave. Texturally: gloriously tender silk-thin beef slices (the cornflour-and-egg-white marinade is what keeps them that way), crisp-on-the-edge bok choy or bean sprouts wilting under the heat, oil swimming on top. Easier than its restaurant-banquet reputation suggests once you have doubanjiang and Sichuan peppercorns in the pantry; the technique is mostly "don't overcook the beef" and "pour the oil while it's smoking". Originates in 1930s Chongqing as a riverboat-worker's dish, water and chillies were cheap, lean cuts of beef tough, then spread through Sichuan in the 1980s as the wider mala movement caught hold.