A College-Student Favorite Turned Dinner Party Go-To

Dry pot—a shallow, stainless-steel wok or pan piled high with crispy fried meat and vegetables, gleaming under a slick of glossy, spicy mala sauce, scattered with sesame seeds and fresh cilantro—was the communal food that defined my student days. When it arrived at the table, conversation quieted, chopsticks hovered and we all leaned in, eyeing our favorite piece. 

In the 2000s, while I was at boarding school in Mianyang—a city in northern Sichuan believed by some to be the birthplace of dry pot—the local restaurant scene was booming with places that specialized in this dish. Dry pot (gānguō, 干锅) is a hearty, stir-fried medley of meats and vegetables cooked with just a splash of sauce. Outside of Sichuan, it’s sometimes called málà xiāngguō (麻辣香锅) or málà gānguō (麻辣干锅). When my family visited on weekends, we’d always go to a chain restaurant called Sanzhishou Dry Pot (三之首干锅). In their signature dish, a unique dry pot featuring duck wings and feet, the meat was stewed until it nearly melted off the bone then combined with buttery white beans and coated in a rich and savory sauce.

A few years later, I moved to Chengdu and spent my first three years of college at Sichuan University’s new Jiang’an campus, on the outskirts of the city, near Shuangliu Airport. Without a car, my food options were limited. The old campus in central Chengdu—where the best eateries were—was only accessible on weekends. Even so, hungry students soon discovered a couple hidden gems: One was a cheap hot pot buffet with very little meat but a grand selection of tofu and vegetables. The other was Chubby Yang Dry Pot (杨胖子干锅), a mom-and-pop spot named for its owner, Yang, whose warm smile and easygoing nature made everyone feel at home. This quickly became a popular spot for group dinners. Our go-to order was the “all-in-one” dry pot with ribs, shrimp and chicken. With endless bowls of white rice and bottles of local Weiyi soy milk (唯怡豆奶) on the side, the meal was so good it was impossible not to finish every bite.

When I moved to Germany for graduate school and started learning to cook, I found myself drawn back to the flavors of Sichuan. My cooking skills were not yet good enough to pull off a whole dinner of Sichuan classics, so dry pot and hot pot became the easy-yet-comforting food I made when I wanted to host a couple of friends. 

Though dry pot may not be at the top of Sichuan’s trendiest foods list anymore—where food trends come fast and furious—it’s still a favorite for young people, especially near college campuses and in residential neighborhoods. Chubby Yang’s has disappeared, but Mianyang’s dry pot spots are still thriving. Recreating this dish feels deeply nostalgic to me: It brings to mind family meals, late-night laughter with college friends from the debate club and the feeling of settling into new places while holding onto familiar flavors.

The Backstory of Dry Pot and Other Jianghu Dishes

Like braised chicken with taro (yuer ji, 芋儿鸡), dry pot belongs to a sub-genre of Sichuan cuisine called jianghu cai (江湖菜), a recent culinary trend that focuses on bold flavors and fresh ingredients. In Lan Yong’s book Research on Jianghu Cuisine in Sichuan and Chongqing (巴蜀江湖菜历史调查报告), he describes this culinary trend as bold and robust, almost a “wild Sichuan cuisine” compared to more traditional dishes like kung pao chicken. Jianghu dishes are served in large platters or pots and typically take center stage as the main course. They often feature affordable inland meats like pork, fish and chicken cut into large, rustic pieces with no intricate knife work. Seasoning is intense with generous use of spices, aromatics and oil. Many jianghu dishes combine a variety of ingredients in one pot, and they’re often named after their place of origin, adding to their geographic identity—Wuxi grilled fish (Wūxī kǎoyú, 巫溪烤鱼), for example.

Dry pot is highly customizable. Most restaurants offer a mix-and-match selection of ingredients, and some even allow you to hand-pick your items, like eateries do when you order individual-serving hot pots (maocai, 冒菜 or malatang, 麻辣烫). The flavor profile is similar to (though often milder than) spicy hot pot, but instead of cooking raw ingredients in broth at the table, everything is stir-fried to completion and then, sometimes, kept warm over a small burner at the table. Common proteins include chicken, ribs, shrimp and bullfrog, and the meats are always balanced by vegetables like celery, potatoes and lotus root. Because the foods featured in dry pots cook at different rates (and restaurants offer different combinations of items to choose from), most ingredients are pre-cooked individually and then briefly stir-fried together, right before serving.

In many Sichuan restaurants, ganguo also refers to a cooking style. For example, dry-pot cauliflower (gānguō huācài,干锅花菜) and dry-pot poplar mushrooms (gānguō cháshùgū, 干锅茶树菇) are both dishes that use similar dry-frying methods to prepare par-cooked vegetables–either blanched or pan-fried. The flavoring for these dishes can vary depending on the restaurant: Some chefs rely on rich dry-pot or hot-pot sauces, while others use doubanjiang or a combination of dried and fresh chilies. Compared to traditional dry pots, which are served as standalone meals, these dishes come in smaller portions and are often presented in a mini wok over a candle. They are typically enriched with slices of pork belly or cured pork that have been fried in oil before the vegetables are added to the wok.

Making Dry Pot at Home

This recipe is inspired by the all-in-one dry pot from Chubby Yang, which features my favorite combination of ingredients, chicken wings and shrimp. To make ganguo at home, it’s common to use a readymade sauce—usually labeled málà xiāngguō (麻辣香锅) sauce—to simplify the process. If you can’t find a dry pot sauce, a small bit of pre-packaged hot pot sauce can work as a substitute. For this recipe, I used The Mala Market’s new Sichuan Mala Sauce for Stir-Fry and Dry Pot, which I found to be more balanced and natural-tasting than other options I’ve tried (with many fewer additives and preservatives).

While most store-bought dry pot sauces come in a one-use plastic package and specify the amount of ingredients one package covers, the Mala Market dry pot sauce comes in a multi-use jar. Its instructions call for 3 tablespoons per pound of ingredients, but if you’re unsure about the sauce’s spice level and want to be cautious, start with less sauce and adjust to taste. For extra mala flavor, you can add more dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns when frying the sauce. 

I recommend using a 2:1 ratio of meat to vegetables when making dry pot, but you can swap in any ingredients you like. Just avoid using anything too delicate, like soft tofu, as it might break down in the pot. Some classic Sichuan dry pot ingredients include quail eggs, fish balls, squid, spam, corn, tofu skin and mushrooms.

Tips for Preparing the Ingredients for Dry Pot

To make dry pot, you pre-cook all your ingredients first, then quickly toss them in the sauce. Traditionally, the ingredients are deep-fried (or sometimes blanched). While developing this recipe, I tested a couple different methods: On my first try making ganguo, I coated everything in starch and deep-fried the pieces of meat and vegetable one by one, but this process was time-consuming and caused unnecessary oil splatter, especially with quick-cooking ingredients like shrimp. On my second try, I found a better balance by shallow-frying the chicken wings but blanching the vegetables and cooling them in an ice bath to retain their crunch. For the shrimp, I simply pan-fried them briefly with aromatics. Preparing them this way is simpler, uses less frying oil and lets the lotus root and celery stay crunchy and the shrimp tender.

Chicken wings take longer to cook than the other ingredients and don’t absorb flavor as easily, so I recommend cooking small pieces and coating them in starch, so more flavor sticks. Sichuan versions of this dish typically use only the flats of chicken wings—the middle part, which sits between the “drumette” (the rounder wing portion that attaches to the body), and the narrow wing tip—but the wings in Germany are sold with both parts, so when cooking them I prefer to separate flats and drumettes and use both, along with the wing tips, if they’re still attached. (You can also only use the flats and save the drumettes for other recipes, if you like). To help the wings take on more flavor, make shallow cuts in the skin and marinate them with a pinch of salt and white pepper. 

To prepare the shrimp for a Sichuan-style dry pot, you should keep the shells and heads on to add flavor to the dish. That said, if you want to use peeled and deveined shrimp, that will work too—just take care not to overcook them.

For more Sichuan restaurant-style dishes you can make at home, check out Xueci’s Yibin Fresh-Chili Beef Noodles (Shengjiao Niurou Mian, 生椒牛肉面) and Taylor’s Heartbreak Jelly Noodles (Shangxin Liangfen, 伤心凉粉) and Salt and Pepper Squid ft. Sichuan Dipping Chilies (Jiaoyan Youyu, 椒盐鱿鱼).