Chongqinghot pot, also known as spicy hot pot, is usually eaten at restaurants, but otherwise is similar to roadside Malatang. Chongqing hot pot is similar to the dry stir-fried Mala Xiang Guo which is also eaten in restaurants. The way of eating hot pot is put food in hot pot, wait for the food to cook, when the food is ready, dip them in sesame oil and eat. People can eat various kinds of food with Chongqing hot pot, such as beef, pork, chicken, Chinese sausages, beef strips, pig blood, duck intestine.
General Recipes
As one of the most spicy types of hotpot, Chongqing hotpot uses different ingredients when making the hotpot base. The Spicy Chongqing hotpot base is mainly red chili oil which made with beef fat and different kinds of spices, such as bay leaf, clove, cinnamon and so on. People can put various kinds of food into the Chongqing hotpot, such as seafood, meat and vegetables. Bean products are also an important option that people would choose.
History
The history of Chongqing hotpot started in the 1920s in Jiangbei District in Chongqing. At the beginning, the peddler who works on the wharf at the time buy the beef trip, cleans and boils it, and then cuts the beef liver and stomach into small pieces, places a clay stove with iron basin divided the stove into different divisions that with different taste. And when the spicy and salty soup boiled, the labor workers begin to eat, each people choose their own food and own area divided in the stove, so they only eat and pay for what they put in that division, which is cheaper. It was not until the 23rd year of the Republic of China that a small restaurant in Chongqing turned the hotpot into a high-grade one, before that, there is no restaurant that serves Chongqing hotpot.
Chongqing Hotpot is not only a local delicacy, but also represents the connotation of Chongqing's food culture. When eating the hotpot, families and friends gather together and surround by the steaming hot pot, talking with each other, which is warm and harmonious. It is the perfect food choice for the traditional Chinese culture of reunion. Also, people would hold Chongqing Hotpot Festival for celebrating and learning more about hotpot, the representation of Chongqing's food culture. Nowadays, hotpot has become an important types of food. In Chongqing, there are total of 26991 hotpot restaurants in 2019. That means, Chongqing hotpot not only represents a food culture, but also a life culture of people who live in Chongqing, which has been passed down for thousands of years in Chinese history.
