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| Huoguo (Hotpot) |
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Also known as "Hotpot" (while Huo stands for Fire, and
Guo stands for Pot), Huoguo is a very popular cuisine in China,
especially in Sichuan Province. It is more like a self-cooking way
of eating. The pot with soup base--usually very spicy, made of dozens
of staples--is placed in the center of the table with a stove underneath
keeping it boiling. People put vegetable, meat and many other things
into it to cook and eat with sesame oil, mashed garlic, sesame sauce,
Sichuan pepper, etc. Huoguo Buffet is very popular. City of Chengdu
and Chongqing are especially famous for their different kinds of
Huoguo.
The Soup Base is the first important thing about Huoguo. Different
restaurants might develop different kinds of soup base flavor to
win in the competition. Fish, chicken, pork, mutton, beef, rabbit,
frog could all be used as the material.
Huoguo could be used to distinguish from simply Hotpot in case
when people refer to the Northern Style Hot Pot in China, Shuan
Yangrou (Instant-Boiled Mutton) could be viewed as the representative
of this kind of food. It's not focused on the soup base.
In the United States, many restaurants refer to it by its Japanese
name, Shabu shabu.
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