All the Tempting Aromas from One Chafing Dish

3 min read

The history of the Chinese people’s eating hotpot dishes can be traced back 10,000 years. The Lding(an ancient pot with two round handles and three or four legs), which today can be seen in museums, is actually the beginning of ancient hotpots.

However, hotpots specifically used for cooking food were reportedly invented by the descendants of Genghis Khan. The Mongolians loved to eat mutton but when troops were on a march or during war, cooking large pieces of mutton was too time-consuming, so the soldiers cut frozen mutton into thin slices, dipped and cooked them in boiling water, then retrieved them instantly and spread on refined salt before devouringthem. Prepared this way, mutton tasted fresh and tender and could be cooked very quickly. This can be regarded as the beginning of the hotpot mutton dish.

Nowadays, the hotpot mutton dish still occupies a crucial role in the family of hotpot dishes. Donglaishun, a long-established restaurant noted for its hotpot grassland mutton in Beijing, has a history of 100 yearsin using traditional charcoal fire and a copper pot. As thin as cicada wings, each mutton slice is no wider than 1mm and is cooked instantly once dipped in the hotpot.

However, the mutton can never be overdone even if boiled for a long time. Moreover, the fat is not greasy and the meat is not dry. Light soup is usually the mostpopular for traditional dipped mutton, but there are as many as a dozen seasonings to complement the mutton, including sesame paste, soy sauce, rice vinegar, Shaoxing wine, thick chili oil, shrimp oil, fermented bean curd, chive flowers, sweetened garlic, coriander and chopped green onion.

Echoing this mutton dish in the far north is the hot and spicy chafing dish in and around south Chongqing.

“Hot”is exclusive to the Chongqing chafing dish; with many red hot peppers, the Chongqing chafing dish is hot, spicy and delicious. After this dish was introduced to other parts of China, the customers who were not used to hot dishes were also tempted to try it. As a result, the mandarin-duck chafing dish, which resembles the Taiji symbol, came into being, with light soup and hot soup being separated from each other, so customers could choose whichever they preferred.

Apart from the two places of origin of the chafing dish, one from the north and the other from the south, the chafing dish has become extremely popular throughout China. The soup for the chafing dish can be light, hot andspicy, of various delicacies, sour and hot, and even act as a tonic. The food contained in the chafing dish includes almost anything edible, from birds and beasts to fishas well as seasonal vegetables. The seasonings can be sesame paste, sesame oil, hot peppers, onion, garlic and vinegar. The chafing dish includes a medley of endless varieties of all food and an infinite possibility of all tastes.

In the beginning, people had chafing dishes only in the winter to warm themselves. But today, many people also love to have them with iced beer in air-conditioned rooms on sultry summer days.

When talking about the dish, the world-famous Chinese tableware, chinaware and chopsticks must be included in the conversation. The mutton slices from Donglaishun are as thin as silk. When placed on a blue-and-white porcelain plate, the floral designs are distinctly visible. For this reason, blue-and-white porcelain plates have become the standard in discriminating mutton, which has contributed a significant element to the Donglaishun chafing dish culture. China plates and china bowls are not only an aspect of this culture, but also the principal tableware on dinner tables in China. The chinaware, which has gone through countless processes in its production from start to finish, such as choice of material, base-making, drying, glazing, burning and so on, is free from sediment and grime. It is indeed the besthome for food. And a pair of chopsticks, consisting of twothin, long bamboo sticks, the top being thicker and square and the bottom being thinner and round, are the best and necessary tools for eating. The form makes the sticks easyto grasp and the food easy to eat. Chopsticks make it easy to take almost everything from the chafing dish, prevent the hands from getting burned and are more sanitary.