Hi, my name is Yu Li, and I am the owner of Tang Hot Pot in Chinatown.
Hot Pot is one of the most popular cuisines in Chinese culture.
You put a simmering soup in the middle of the table, and then you can choose different
flavors of broth.
The one we serve at Tang Hot Pot is the spicy beef tallow broth.
You cook it with beef fat and a lot of Chinese ingredients and spices, like chili peppercorn,
star anise, dry chili, and goji, so it really has that complex flavor that is unique in
Sichuan hot pot.
This is actually our signature Tang Pot.
Inside is the pork bone broth cooked with chicken, and outside is the spicy beef tallow.
The first thing you would do in hot pot is pick a dipping sauce.
The traditional dipping sauce that is matched with the spicy broth is sesame oil.
Here you see our Sichuan Adventurer Platter.
We have swamp eel and pork blood, which people might have never heard of in a restaurant
before.
But if you want to taste authentic Sichuan cuisine and see what they really eat there,
this would be the platter you order.
I always recommend that people put in the vegetables first, because it takes the longest
time to cook, and so the vegetables won't absorb the flavor of other ingredients.
After I put in the vegetables, the next thing I recommend is putting in the meat and the
organs.
I just put in the beef tongue.
Dip it nine or 10 times until you don't see any red on the meat.
It might be a little spicy.
The next thing I would put in is the beef tripe, which is also called beef stomach.
It's one of the signature dishes in Sichuan cuisine.
Eight seconds and then this is good to eat.
The meat I'm putting in now is prime ribeye.
Since the meat is so fresh and premium you only need to put it in for eight or 10 seconds,
and then you can eat it.
I like to eat my meat in the clear broth, so I can get the most taste out of the meat.
At last, I recommend putting in the pork blood, the swamp eel, and the chicken gizzard.
It's better to eat them after you boil them for two or three minutes, so they can absorb
all the flavor that's already in the soup.
I recommend people put the seafood in after meat so the broth won't taste like seafood.
Last, I would put in the starches, like the vermicelli noodles.
Any starch will absorb all the flavors and thicken the soup.
But everyone has their own way of cooking hot pot.
I've been going to Chengdu and trying hot pot since I was little, so I had the flavor
in my palate.
When I moved to New York, I felt like this was something that could open the whole hot
pot experience to people who had never had hot pot before.
It's good for going out with friends and family.
You guys are all cooking together, and there's a lot of teaching.
That's what I try to bring to New York from Chengdu.