Hot pot refers to several Chinese varieties of steamboat stew. It consists of a simmering metal pot of stock at the center of the dining table. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, and seafood. The cooked food is usually eaten with a dipping sauce.
Standards like Ma Po Do Fu (tofu topped with a bit of minced beef, floating in chili bean sauce) and Gong Bao Ji Ding (a spicy chicken dish known even overseas; think Kung Pao Chicken) come from the provincial capital of Chengdu, where chili is as common at mealtime as rice across the rest of China.
Frozen meat is sliced deli-thin to prepare it for hot pot cooking. Slicing frozen meat this way causes it to roll up during cooking, and it is often presented as such. Meats used include lamb, beef, chicken, and others. The cooking pot is often sunk into the table and fueled by propane, or alternatively is above the table and fueled by a portable butane gas stove or hot coals. Meat or vegetables are loaded individually into the hot cooking broth by chopsticks, and cooking time is brief. Meat often only takes 15 to 30 seconds to cook.
Chuanchuanxiang is a kind of spicy hot snack in China, somewhat like hot pot. Sliced raw meats, edible offals (entrails and internal organs), and vegetables are impaled on bamboo skewers, and dipped into a pan of boiling spicy soup mounted above a heating device.
Chengdu snacks are popular for their unique flavors and cooked with various seasonings. They have a particular style in color, smell, taste and shape.
You could go to the places below to taste Chengdu food.
- Grandma Chen's Beancurd Restaurant
- Lotus Palace Bar and Restaurant, Chengdu
- Cafe Panam, Chengdu
- Chengdu Tong Ren Tang Imperial Meals Restaurant, Chengdu
- Shizilou Hot-pot Restaurant, Chengdu
- Caigen Xiang Restaurant, Chengdu
- Baguo Buyi Restaurant, Chengdu
- Fiesta Thai Restaurant, Chengdu
- Gingko Restaurant, Chengdu
- Grandma's Kitchen, Chengdu
- Kuaile Laojia Restaurant, Chengdu
- Rome Restaurant, Chengdu
- Tandoor Indian Cuisine, Chengdu
- Xizang Fengqing Wu, Chengdu
FOOD
There are people generalize about eating habits in China, they say, ¡±Sweet South, Salty North, Spicy East and Sour West¡±. All of these flavors are included in Chengdu cuisine. Each time when you step into an alley, you will be attracted by many different flavors. You may stop at a splendid or old restaurant, then get in and enjoy a delicious meal. When you get out again, you may smile for the fine dishes you had. Chengdu food is famous not for rare materials, nor for complicated cooking procedure. Cook use ordinary ingredients, but the composition of different ingredients is artistic. So people say, Chengdu cuisine is special for its flavor. Usually it has a main flavor, supplemented by several other flavors. You can taste salty, sweet, spicy, and tingling. Food thus made is soft, crisp, fragrant and delicious. Making wonderful out of ordinary, this is the real essence of Chengdu cuisine.
Sichuan cuisine
The Sichuan cuisine is ranked the first place on the list of China's top four food families and by all means a treasure in China's culinary garden. The Sichuan cuisine of Chengdu has long been named the ¡°authentic Sichuan food.¡±
Over 3,000 types of flavours and hundreds of dishes, the Sichuan cuisine out there features both colour and aroma. Every dish has its own flavor, so one hundred dishes have one hundred flavours. Furthermore, many Sichuan dishes have relevant stories. Famous traditional dishes like ¡°Twice-cooked pork¡±, ¡°Gongbao Chicken¡± , ¡±Mapo Beancurd¡± have been popular in many places worldwide.
Twice-cooked pork
Boil ham, then stir-fly it, steam ham first then stir-fly it. Then dish is of red intermingled green, evenly sliced pork, and strong arome. It is slight hot with a little bit sweet.
Gongbao Chicken
As a traditional Sichuan dish, it is made from chicken, dry chill, and peanuts, which was invented by Ding Baozhen's che fin the end of Qing Dynasty.( DingBaozhen was the Junior Guardian of the Heir-Apparent, honourably named 'Gongbao')
Mapo Beancurd
Dated back to the early years of Tongzhi period of Qing Dynasty, the dish was first cooked in Wanfuqiao, north suburb of Chengdu, and featured'braised skills'. Smashed beef and green leaks and garlic sprouts are seen as dressings on beancurd, accompanied by chilli oil; the dish is hot, spicy, tender, soft, palatable, and fresh.
Hotpot
Chengdu has a long history of eating hotpot. The great writer Zuo Si in West Jin Dynasty, in his, wrote:¡°There is a golden pot in the middle, with chiopsticks and bowls in four corners, soup is very refreshing with fish inside.¡± Actually he was talking about a kind of family small hotpot. Chengdu hotpot is hot and spicy, with lasting flavor. Under the collective name there is a variety of different types of special hotpots, such as beef offal hotpot, mutton hotpot, dip fish. Conjee bottom hotpot¡¡altogether there are more than ten types, and several hundred dishes for hotpot.
Every material in Sichuan cuisine can be consumed in a hotpot. Guest with different tastes and favorites can find what they like in hotpot restaurants at Chengdu.
Snacks
Chengdu snacks are famous to domestic and foreign guests because of smallness and delicacy. There is a good saying that ¡°Chengdu snacks are supreme among their counterparts worldwide.¡± When making snacks, people choose good ingredients, make them with craftsmanship, the resultant snacks are of many types and different flavors, fine in color, fragrance, and flavor. There are 500 sorts of common snacks and over 5000 snack shops. About 1/3 of all shops in Chengdu are snack shops, seen everywhere in big streets and small alleys. This unprecedented number is the biggest nationwide.
Dragon Chaoshou
¡°Chaoshou¡± is what Sichuan people call Wonton. It chooses materials carefully, blends thoroughly, Chaoshou thus made is delicious, soft, tender, and is descriped as ¡°thin as paper, tender as silk¡±. Chaoshou has many different types: original soup, clear soup, red oil, braised soup, etc. Each type represents a unique flavor.
Zhong Dumplings
It is the representative of Sichuan dumplings. It was named after it soriginator in Chengdu, Zhong Shaobo. The main difference of Zhong Dumplings to dumplings in Northern China is the fact that stuffing in Zhong Dumpling is purley meat without vegetables. When it is served on table, it is sprayed with specially made red oil, thus makes dumplings tatse sweet, salty and slightly spicy.
Baijia Gaoji Vermiclli
Vermicelli is transparent, with striking color distinction of red and white in the bowl, spicy and delicious, flavor lasts for a long time, and it enjoys good reputation.
Han Stuffed Bun
It uses nice ingredients. Skin is thin and soft; stuffing full and tender, delicious and refreshing. An old saying tells that ¡°In the North, we have Goubbuli, in the South we have Han Stuffed Bun¡±.
Lai Rice Dumping
In 1937, Lai Yuanxin opened a rice dumpling restaurant, thus came the name of Lai Rice Dumpling. The skin is thin and nourishing, the stuffing has more than ten types,like black sesame, white sesame, white sesame, peanut, walnut meat, ice orange, sweetened bean paste, etc. Rice dumplings are very delicious.
Distinctive Delicacy Street
Chengdu has the nickname of ¡°Delicacy Capital¡± with over thirty thousand restaurants. Many distinctive delicacy streets spread from west to east in a fan shape. There are Shaxi Line [Wwstern extension of Shawan ROOD], Yipintianxia Delicacy Commercial Pedestrian Street, Yangxin Lin Delcacy Street and Funan new Community Hotpot Street, Cottage Delicacy and Recreation Circle [including Qintai Road, Jinli West Road, Fanglin Road, Qinghua Road], Wuhou Temple Grand Street, Shuangnan Delicacy District, Yulin-China Delicacy District, Kehua Road-Consulate Road Delicacy Street, Southern Extension of People South Road Delicacy and recreation Street, Wangping Street Delicacy District.
Yangxi Line (western extension of Yangshi street)
Yangxi Line Delicacy Street has long been famous nationwide. In here concentrates big-name restaurants like Gingko, Shufeng fat beef, Nantaiyue, Chongqing Caigengxiang, Fuwanjia, Rongxingyuan, Happy Old Home, Red Apricot, Grand Ronghe, Taoranju, Baguyuan, and Family Mao Restaurant, etc.
Yipintianxia delicacy Commercial Pedestrian Street
If is a special feature street that Chengdu is making special efforts to build. At the entrance of the street there is a big sculpture; a huge hand holding a pair of thick and long chopsticks, seems like about to eat some delicacy. This street covers a planned land of 300mu, with total building area of 460 thousand square meters. Famous Sichuan restaurants are next to each other in this street. Happy Old Home, Grand Ronghe, Red Apricot¡¡each restaurant has its features and special cuisines.
Funan New Community Hotpot Street
There rose a brand new hotpot street in the last two years in Funan New Community next to Yangxi Line. Nearly twenty hotpot restaurants are doing business on this street, like Food God Huanglading Hotpot, Zenshiji Loach hotpot Restaurant, Zhaolaosi Nine Chi Goose Intestine Hotpot, Babayan Duck Intestine Hotpot, Apalone Soup Hotpot, Kaiyuan Refreshing Hotpot, Bamboo Shoot Chicken Hotpot, Connecting Hotpot, Basin Shrimp, Mountian Rarity Hotpot, Frog Hotpot, etc.
Wuhou Traditional Delicacy District
On Wuhou Grand Road there stand New Mountian City Caigenxiang, Kong Family Dish, Shixiang lake Restaurant, Qingshan Restaurant, Wufuyan Restaurant, Datang People Restaurant, Camo David Blue Beach, New Tianfu Restaurant, Gaolixuan Korean Barbecue, the Empire Club, etc.
American Consulate Delicacy District
In this district there are small western food restaurant, Laoshi Family Spicy Crab, Red Star Grand Restaurant, Old Chengdu Gongguan Dish Deyue Tower Restaurant, Wei Hotpot, Happy Old Home, Zhaolaoshi Nine Goose Intestine Hotpot, Heji Abalone Hotpot, Haishanghai, haishanghuang, Tianren Seafood Cantonese Restaurant, New Out Beach Restaurant, Thailang Shark Wing Restaurant, Sunshine Restaurant, Prosperity Restaurant, Nature Fish Restaurant, Brother Mao Old Duck Soup, etc.