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Huoguo Wikipedia

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 Japan|Japanese name, Shabu shabu.

Last Modified:   2005-02-26