Every late autumn and early winter as the weather gets colder and colder, it's a good time to gather with your friends and relatives. However, even in a well equipped hotel with heaters, ordinary fried dishes become cold in a short time. So here comes the right time for a hotpot! Coincidentally, it seems that animals have been storing up their fat in order to survive the winter which makes for good cuisine on your table. Haikou's hot pot dishes have their own features - this dish was never the exclusive property of Northern China!
Firstly you can have hotpot anytime you want, unlike the restricted season in the North, whilst in Hainan ingredients from both sea and land abound. Apart from mutton, beef and pork which are highly rated in the North, there is a wide variety of seafood for you to choose from for hotpot in Haikou. The most agreeable thing is, after eating tasty but greasy meats you can then have fresh vegetables to refresh your palate as a good ending to the meal - as winter is the boom season for vegetables, they are as cheap as grass! In Haikou, if your friends visit you at home, the most convenient way to treat your guests is to offer them a hotpot meal.
If you are well prepared for the visit, you can use materials that show your kindness and generosity. If a casual visitor pops in, you can still grab whatever you have in your kitchen to make up a good hotpot.
"Da Bian Lu" (Chafing Dish) is one of the culinary masterpieces that make natives of Haikou proud, equating to hotpot for people from the mainland. The history of Haikou's chafing dish is long and the names are numerous. Old people differentiated the names according to the four seasons as "spring pot", "summer pot", "autumn pot" and "winter pot" which modern people are unused to.
Today people simplify the name to "four season pot" and compared to the North, the taste of the hotpot meal of Haikou is lighter and retains the original flavor of foods. The cooking method and main materials are as follows:
SOUP: a pot of boiling water with slices of ginger, scallion pieces and fresh cooking oil.
INGREDIENTS: meat and fish such as beef, mutton, chicken, duck, shrimp and crab; vegetables like white gourd, lettuce, white turnip, mushroom, bean curd and matrimony vine etc.
SEASONING: a mixture of crushed garlic, scallion pieces, barbeque sauce, Hainan chili sauce, Hainan lime etc.
