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Food in Beijing |
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Food in Beijing |
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HotPotHot Pot is a varied and interesting 'cook by yourself' experience. You choose what to eat and the ingredients are prepared and arrive ready to cook. The common ingredients are meat (mutton, chicken, beef) and fish, plus various types of Tofu, mushrooms, eggs, noodles and vegetables. These are cooked in a 'soup' that is heated by gas, electricity or flame. Meat is prepared by being thinly sliced while frozen. When added to the gently bubbling soup, it cooks in about 30 seconds. Leafy vegetables and thread noodles cook even quicker. However, starchy vegetables, such as potato and yam slices, need a few minutes. Tofu and mushrooms perhaps 2 minutes or so. Hot Pot comes in basically two styles - Sichuan and Mongolian. Both are commonly found in Beijing. Sichuan hotpot involves a sesame paste 'dip' made from ground sesame seeds (paste) and sesame oil. Other dip types are sometimes available. The sesame dip is often topped with coriander. Other condiments are also usually available, including garlic, spring onion and chilli oil, to add either to the soup or dip.
The other distinction of Sichuan HotPot is that the soup is often spicy, or half spicy. By 'half spicy' is meant a pot divided in two, with a spicy half and a non-spicy half (yin-yang) which is ideal if two or more people are to share the pot.
Mongolian Hot Pot has a simpler non-spicy soup, tradionally in a smaller but taller copper pot. Proud of the fine taste of its free range meats from Inner Mongolia, spices and dips are much less prevalent - the idea is to enjoy the natural taste of the ingredients.
In addition to traditional Hot Pot restaurants, there are now many individual place Hot Pot restaurants, normally where you take a stool around a central serving area. You can make selections from a menu or choose one of the fixed menus. You will have a choice of soup base. These are common in shopping center food courts. There are at least three in Wangfujing alone.
Fixed price buffet style Hot Pots can also be found. Beside the low price, you can select exactly the amounts you like of what you prefer and the choice is usually very wide. Although this is 'eat as much you like', make sure you do eat what you take or you'll have to pay for the extra. There is a huge and very popular buffet style restaurant in Xidan where for 50 yuan per person you also can choose from side dishes, fruit, cakes and soups. Drinks, even beer, are also included in the price.
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