Smelly (But Tasty) Hot Pot

Maybe Mother Nature heard my complaints of Ottawa's recent hot and muggy weather systems. It looks like it will be a cool 20 degrees Celsius for the next week. Having spicy hot pot is a perfect way to feel better, regardless of the weather.

Using homemade pork bone soup, we turned it into a stinky and spicy hot pot dinner using the Little Sheep Mongolian hot pot soup base. We made sure we had the windows open for fresh air, though I’m sure our neighbours didn’t appreciate the body odour-like stench.

It’s the cumin used in the soup base. Okay, it might not smell that much when you’re eating it, but your clothes will smell like b.o afterwards. Nasty stuff. I’ve replicated the soup base before by using some chicken bouillon powder (we have Knorr), cumin, salt, sugar, and a few Thai chili peppers. We had some of the Little Sheep soup base in the cupboard.

The smelly soup base is like shawarma, in that it's satisfying when you eat one although you reek of garlic. However, it's gross when someone, who had just eaten a shawarma or two (possibly with extra garlic sauce), sits beside you on the bus.

Among the various things we had on the table for hot pot, there was wood ear mushroom, tofu puffs, bean thread noodles, thinly sliced eye of round beef, frozen homemade wontons, bok choi, pork balls, and corn.

We don’t usually eat hot pot with any sides, but we had some sweet potatoes and some tempura batter mix around. We had a plate of tempura sweet potatoes just as the hot pot hot was ready.

My favourite things to eat are the tofu puffs and wontons – especially when we use the spicy hot pot soup mix. They just absorb the spiciness so well. Mmm… smelly hot pot.