When it's too cold to eat out, think Hot Pot!

Unfortunately the weather is starting to get a bit chilly and the family decided to eat at home this past Saturday instead of going out. It's usually pretty hard to find a meal that can satisfy everyone's cravings so we ended up having hot pot. Chinese hot pot is similar to Korean/Japanese Shabu Shabu. It takes little preparation and is perfect for a night in with your friends and family.

Here are some easy steps to preparing your own hot pot!

1. Choose a soup base:

• You can tailor this to your own needs; keep it simple with a chicken stock or add some spices and peppers if you like a little kick in your food
• Another option is to make your own stock. Boil some water and throw in some veggies!
• The base isn't THAT important because after you cook all the meat, the soup will flavour itself!

2. Choose your meats/veggies/noodles:

• Here's the best part of hot pot, picking what you're going to eat. When my family does it, we usually have three groups; meats, veggies and noodles but of course this is different for everyone!
• When it comes to the meat, you can get beef/lamb/pork slices, chicken is okay but usually gets a bit tough from cooking in the soup. 
• We usually also stock up on fish balls,beef balls etc
• Pick up some noodles to cook LAST because it'll really soak up the flavour from the soups. You can buy kalguksu, udon, instant noodles... anything you want!
• Last but not least, veggies! There's really no restrictions here, buy what you would normally like to eat and just throw it in for a few seconds and it's ready to eat!

Lay everything out like the picture and you're good to go!

-Clara