Sichuan Mala Hotpot, From Scratch (Mala Huoguo With Tallow Broth)
Published Nov 10, 2020, Updated Jun 06, 2024
Hotpot Party at Your House
Although this recipe for mala hotpot first published in early 2018 is the most popular recipe on our entire blog, we have revised and updated it as of November 2020. Why? Well, when I first developed it, there weren’t many recipes for Sichuan hotpot online in English—and none at all, that I could find, that included beef fat (tallow), a style of hotpot broth widely loved in Chongqing and Chengdu. There probably were Chinese-language online videos and recipes for it, but they were less accessible back then. Plus, we had not yet started selling or importing hotpot base at The Mala Market, so my knowledge was limited to my memories of having hotpot many times in Chengdu and to my go-to cookbook published in Sichuan in 2010. So I used the cookbook’s recipe and adapted it to our liking to produce a broth very similar to what you’d find in Chengdu.
Since then, however, there have been several jaw-dropping viral (in China) videos of the manufacturing of hot pot base in Chengdu. Plus, now there are Chinese home cooks and chefs making their video channels available on YouTube for the whole world to access. Both Chef Wang and Li Ziqi have posted detailed hot pot videos. (And if you’re not subscribed to these two channels, you are missing out on an incredible Sichuan culinary education.) So less than three years later, there is a lot more guidance out there on making hotpot soup base that tastes like it does in Chengdu, and I’ve learned quite a lot about how to make my good hotpot soup even better.
Also, in the meantime, we have begun selling readymade hotpot base. This year we even collaborated with one of Chengdu’s most famous hotpot chains to import a beef-tallow hotpot base for the ultimate Sichuan hotpot. Alas, there is a reason you never see this product in the U.S. There is an extremely narrow range of acceptable meat imports to the U.S., with lots of rather opaque rules, and ours fell short, resulting in the forced destruction of thousands of perfectly good packages of hotpot base. But live and learn.
Making Mala Hotpot Base From Scratch
In any case, making your own hotpot base with beef tallow is still an exceptionally delicious and fairly easy thing to do. There are two things to know about making Sichuan-style mala hotpot at home. First, it takes almost every item in the Sichuan pantry to make the spicy soup from scratch. And second, it also requires an electric hotpot or a portable burner to keep the pot hot at the table.
But I’m here to tell you it is worth the trouble to acquire everything it takes, because after you make the soup broth, the cooking is done and stress-free, since diners will take over from there. And mala hotpot is a celebration, whether you are eating it in a Chengdu restaurant or serving it in your own home. There is just something inherently festive about gathering around the bubbling pot and cooking your own food at your own pace while interacting in a real way with friends and family. It’s an activity. An event. Interactive entertainment that doesn’t involve a screen.
The spicy-and-numbing hotpot soup is made from loads of chilies, Sichuan pepper, doubanjiang and numerable other aromatics and spices that is cooked down with oil into a spice base. That base is then mixed with a broth—usually a pork and/or beef broth, but chicken is also good. We often use a boxed broth, but it’s worth the extra effort to make a simple chicken broth or source some beef and pork bones for a meaty broth.
In Chengdu and Chongqing the oil is often rendered beef fat, or tallow. Beef tallow gives hotpot another layer of flavor for sure. However, as we experienced in one hotpot place in Chengdu, too much tallow makes the hotpot, the room and you smell like a barnyard. So I’ve opted for a mix of tallow and super-flavorful roasted rapeseed oil (a type of non-GMO canola made in Sichuan) in this recipe. Alternatively, you can go with any neutral cooking oil as the only fat and it will still be plenty flavorful, just not quite as savory and deep.
My recipe may look like I’m trying to start a fire, but you’re using a lot of broth so it takes a whole lot of chilies and spices to get the flavor and intensity one expects in a proper Sichuan hotpot. It does not pay to have a light hand, as mala hotpot is meant to be just that, ma (numbing) and la (spicy). One way this recipe differs from others is that I recommend removing some of the sediment from all those flavorings in the base before you add it to the hotpot as it can take up too much space and gunk up your bites.
The other half of the pot is for the mild broth, made from meat, mushroom or Chinese herbal spices. This is to allow those with a lower spice tolerance to enjoy hotpot and also comes in handy to dunk ingredients whose flavor you want to taste on their own. Craig and I tend to use both sides, whereas chili fiend Fongchong uses only the spicy side.
Selecting a Yinyang Hotpot
To make this type of two-broth hot pot, you’ll want a divided pot. We are especially fond of the ones that divide the pot into yinyang shapes. We originally imported some copper hotpots from China for The Mala Market. Copper, however, is a soft metal, and these pots turned out be too easy to dent and stain.
So we have since imported handmade brass hot pots and heavy-gauge stainless steal hot pots designed specifically for us in Chengdu by a company that makes them for restaurants. They are equally beautiful but stronger and less prone to discoloration than copper.
These pots require a separate heat source, either a portable gas burner (powered by butane canister) or induction burner. Butane burners are affordable, easy to use and don’t require an unsightly cord snaking out from the pot and across the table to an outlet like the electric hotpots and induction burners. I use this Japanese Iwatani gas burner and am very happy with it.
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Preparing the Table
Once you’ve got your hotpot soup squared away, then you can focus on the wide array of things that can be cooked in the hotpot. The choice here is pretty endless, but here are some ideas to get you started:
- Very thinly sliced beef, lamb, pork, chicken (You can buy these meats pre-sliced for hot pot in Asian markets; or freeze a larger chunk of meat and thinly slice it yourself with a very sharp knife; or, if you’re a hotpot obsessive, invest in this home deli-meat slicer, which seems to be specifically for hotpot). Larger pieces of meat like chicken wing flats often come pre-marinated.
- Seafood including thinly sliced white fish, whole scallops, shrimp, Asian fish balls (a vast assortment of which can be found in large Asian markets)
- Dried tofu “skin” (pre-soaked in hot water), fried tofu puffs
- Offal such as chicken hearts and gizzards, beef tripe, and anything else you fancy with interesting textures (see this post about eating hotpot in Sichuan to understand the necessity of different textures in the hotpot)
- Green vegetables like spinach, baby bokchoy or yuchoy, thinly sliced zucchini, celtuce or cucumber (cucumber vertically sliced on a mandolin is one of our faves), winter melon
- Root vegetables such as thinly sliced lotus root, potato, turnip, daikon
- Mushrooms: shiitake, enoki, portobello
- Noodles: pre-soaked sweet potato noodles, fresh udon, or other types of noodles that don’t release a lot of starch; instant ramen noodles are also popular
- Mini dumplings from the freezer section; no need to thaw them first
At the table, I tend to give every diner two small dishes to mix their own dipping sauces. With Sichuan mala hotpot, the food comes out of the pot already highly flavored, so the dip of choice in Chengdu is simply toasted sesame oil mixed with vegetable oil and fresh garlic and maybe MSG and cilantro. Food cooked in the mild side (or in northern-Chinese or Mongolian hotpot) needs a flavor boost, so northerners often add some runny sesame paste as well as black vinegar and maybe soy sauce and chili oil to their dipping bowl. Some hotpot restaurants offer a sauce bar with a couple dozen ingredients for concocting your own idiosyncratic blend.
In Chengdu, it’s also fairly common with hotpot, and especially with chuanchuanxiang, a related style of hotpot where the ingredients are cooked on skewers, to serve a dry dip, gandie, of chilies, salt, sugar and various spices. Yum!
When you think about all the different flavors in the hotpot and in the dipping sauce as well as the diverse kinds of ingredients that can be cooked in the pot, you get a sense of why this meal is so exciting. And why it can go on for hours. And even more hours if accompanied by cold beer. And good friends.
Sichuan Mala Hotpot, From Scratch (Mala Huoguo)
Ingredients
Spicy broth
- 2-3 cups Sichuan dried chilies such as facing heaven zidantou, xiaomila and/or lantern (kind and amount depending on how hot you want the broth)
- 2 tablespoons red Sichuan peppercorns
- 2 tablespoons green Sichuan peppercorns
- 1 handful whole Chinese spices such as star anise, fennel seed, cassia bark, clove, bay leaf, sand ginger, etc.
- 1 cup caiziyou (roasted rapeseed oil) or Chinese peanut oil
- 5 scallions, cut in half
- 1 cup beef tallow (or substitute with oil)
- 3 inches peeled ginger, roughly chopped
- 5-6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- ⅓ cup Pixian doubanjiang (chili bean paste), mashed with a fork into a rough paste
- 4 tablespoons douchi (fermented black soybeans), mashed with a fork into a rough paste
- 6 tablespoons fragrant hot ground chilies (Sichuan chili flakes)
- 2 quarts homemade or boxed stock (made from beef and/or pork bones; or from chicken)
- ½ cup Shaoxing wine
- 2 Chinese black cardamom (caoguo) optional
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon MSG or 1 tablespoon mushroom powder (optional)
- a few whole dried chilies
- 2 tablespoons whole green Sichuan peppercorns
Mild broth
- 2 quarts homemade or boxed stock (made from beef and/or pork bones; or from chicken)
- ¼ cup Shaoxing wine
- 3 scallions, cut in sections
- 1 tomato, quartered, or a handful of Chinese dried dates (jujubes) (optional)
Dipping ingredients
- Reference list in story above, but basically anything you like, sliced thin for cooking: meats and seafood, offal, green and root vegetables, different forms of tofu, mushrooms, Chinese noodles and dumplings, etc.
Instructions
Hotpot broths
- Add dried chilies to a sauce pan and cover with water. Bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off heat and let chilies soak while you prepare other ingredients, or for at least 30 minutes. After they have soaked until soft, remove caps from the chilies and chop as finely as possible, until they are basically a paste.
- Grind the 2 tablespoons red Sichuan pepper, 2 tablespoons green Sichuan pepper and the whole spices in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle until coarsely ground. Remove to a bowl and just cover with water to soak for about 15 minutes.
- Add roasted rapeseed oil or peanut oil to a dutch oven or soup pot and heat over a medium flame. Add scallions and cook over medium heat until they are starting to brown, and then remove the scallions. Add the beef tallow, ginger and garlic and continue to cook over a medium heat until fragrant, but do not brown them.
- Add minced chili paste from step 1, chili bean paste, fermented black soybeans and ground chilies and cook for a couple minutes. Pour in 2 quarts stock and bring to a boil. Add spices from step 2 (with their water), wine, Chinese black cardamom, sugar and MSG or mushroom powder if using. Reduce heat and simmer soup at a very low boil for 10 minutes. Turn off heat and allow soup to steep while you prepare the other hotpot ingredients, preferably at least half an hour.
Dipping ingredients and tabletop cooking
- Prepare foods to be cooked by slicing them thinly and arranging nicely on individual plates, or grouping like ingredients on large plates. Leave shrimp, scallops, meat balls and fish balls, etc., whole.
- Gather condiments for dipping sauces. Mince garlic, scallions and cilantro if using. If using sesame paste, mix it with water to get a runny, mixable condiment.
- Make the mild soup by pouring ingredients directly into cold hotpot on one side: 2 quarts stock, wine and scallions as well as tomato or jujubes if using. Return to your prepared spicy broth and use a large strainer or spoon to remove most of the sediment. Add the spicy broth to its side of the pot and top with a few whole chilies and 2 tablespoons whole green Sichuan peppercorns, or to taste.
- Plug in your electric hotpot and turn it to high or ignite your portable gas burner and turn flame to high. It will take 5 to 10 minutes or so for the two soups to come to a gentle boil, so this is a good time for everyone to mix their dipping sauces.
- Adjust the heat to keep a gentle boil and begin adding ingredients to the pot a few at a time. Keep an eye on steak and seafood, which will not take much time to cook. Cooking those ingredients in a ladle or special hotpot strainer is a good idea, or just hold them under the broth with your chopsticks so they don't get lost in the soup.
- As the broths boil away, top them off with hot water.
Tried this recipe?
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Facing Heaven Zi Dan Tou Chili (Chao Tian Jiao)Buy on Mala Market
Lantern Chili (Deng Long Jiao)Buy on Mala Market
Xiao Mi La ChiliBuy on Mala Market
Da Hong Pao Sichuan Pepper (Hua Jiao)Buy on Mala Market
Green Sichuan Pepper (Qing Hua Jiao)Buy on Mala Market
Chinese 5 Spice (DIY Whole Spices)Buy on Mala Market
Sand Ginger (Sha Jiang)Buy on Mala Market
Roasted Rapeseed Oil (Caiziyou)Buy on Mala Market
Handcrafted 3-Year Pixian Chili Bean Paste (Yi Feng He Hao Doubanjiang)Buy on Mala Market
3-Year Fermented Soybeans (Black Beans, Douchi)Buy on Mala Market
Fragrant-Hot Ground Chilies (Sichuan Chili Flakes, Xiang La La Jiao Mian)Buy on Mala Market
Shaoxing Huadiao Rice Wine for CookingBuy on Mala Market
Smoked Cao Guo (Tsao Ko, Chinese Black Cardamom)Buy on Mala Market
Cuizi Small-Mill Roasted Sesame Oil (Cold-Pressed)Buy on Mala Market
Chinese Stone-Ground Sesame Paste (Zhi Ma Jiang)Buy on Mala Market
Baoning Handcrafted Vinegar, Aged 3 Years (Sichuan Black Vinegar)Buy on Mala Market
It seems a shame to go to all the effort of making a hot pot broth, only to start from a base of canned broth, especially for the clear broth side where the quality of the broth is paramount and you want to end the hotpot with a broth that is addictively drinkable.
IMHO, far easier than canned broth is to just throw some chicken bones in with the chilis and Sichuan pepper when they fry (this saves you the blanching step). If you have pork neck bones, throwing one in each side of the pot also adds a deep savory note as well. The broth will be slightly weak to start with but only gets better as the hotpot cooks. You can simply top up with boiling, slightly salted water, the broth is plenty flavorful enough to stand up to the dilution. This “cheater” method is great for a weeknight home meal.
If you want to go all out, the best way to do it is with a pressure cooker. Combine garlic, ginger, scallions, salt, chicken bones, and either pork neck bones or the cut up end of a pork leg bone (it’s essential that it’s cut so the bone marrow can flavor the soup) along with, optionally, dried scallops, dried shrimp, country ham, wolfberries, jujubes and cook under pressure for an hour. If you have a stovetop pressure cooker, let it cook WITH venting so that the fat emulsifies into the soup. If you cook on the stovetop, cook for 3 hours covered at a rolling boil, occasionally topping up with water. Strain and use as the base for both sides, saving some to top up, adding fresh ginger/garlic/scallions/tomatoes/wolfberries on the clear broth side.
I’d even rather use plain water than canned chicken broth, the ingredients will end up flavoring the broth plenty.
Also, a common trick for home hotpot is, at the end of the meal, strain both broths into containers and put them in the fridge overnight, then separate off the fat and freeze the broths and the spicy fat. You can then use this as the base for your next hot pot, essentially turning your hot pot into a “lu shui” style mastersauce.
Thanks, as always, for the knowledgeable feedback! I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one however. If I have to spend four hours making a stock that includes pork neck bones, dried scallops, country ham and wolfberries before I even begin making the mala soup, then I’m never going to make hot pot! I’m also not sure I want chicken bones and pork neck bones taking up space in the hot pot in the shortcut version….
Plus, some boxed chicken stock, such as Costco’s Kirkland brand, is actually pretty good, and much preferable to water, IMHO. But I think the difference between us is that I think of the broth side as an also-ran. It’s just there for occasional relief from the spicy side. If the mild side were the main event, then I can see making it this way.
Having said all that, I really appreciate your providing all this instruction and super tips for the purists. Remind me to have hot pot at your place some time! 😀
How about next time you come over, we can make a hotpot with both sides spicy, one with boxed broth and one with a lovingly prepared master stock. Then we can both see which side we prefer.
Also, if you haven’t bought a pressure cooker yet, it will seriously change your relationship with broths and soups. The ability to just throw a bunch of bones in a pot and get delicious soup base in just an hour is a game changer. Plus, the electric ones also take over the role of the rice cooker so they barely take up any extra real estate. The Instant Pot is great if you’re in North America.
It’s a deal. Though I have no doubt the master stock side would be better. It’s just a cost/benefit analysis.
I have been resisting the Instant Pot trend, but I didn’t know it made quality rice as well as stock… You may have talked me into it! Fong Chong would love to have more Cantonese soups.
I grew up in Chengdu and this recipe is amazing! Reminds me of home.
Thank you. That’s the ultimate compliment!
Just tried your recipe and this is the easiest, most straightforward recipe for this particular hot pot!! Love it. I’m super interested in the copper pot and looks like theyre not quite easy to find here in the states or online. Any chance you know where or will you sell some in the future?
I love to hear this, Jamie! And you are right about quality hot pots—there aren’t any like this available in the U.S. That’s why we’re thinking of bringing some in, if we can make the price point work. We’re working on it and will definitely let you know if/when we do!
Could you elaborate on why we don’t want to fry the whole chilis and peppercorns until brown? It seems a shame to use so much of an ingredient that’s hard to get to only sizzle it for a second.
Hi Emry,
Do sizzle them long enough to flavor the oil, but I believe another main role of the chilies is the visual punch, as they make for a bright-red hot pot. Plus they do cook in the broth as you’re eating the hot pot. But if you don’t mind a brown hot pot, sizzle longer!
HI there – I am wondering whether or not it makes a significant difference if I use water instead of chicken stock? I made this recipe the other day and felt it was delicious (but just a tad bit saltier than I would have liked despite using unsalted chicken stock). My guess is that with all the super spiced flavoring/seasoning in the hot pot recipe that water vs. chicken stock wouldn’t make too much of a difference – but I’m not confident in this guess and would rather not waste some good ingredients.
Any chance you know the answer to this one? Water vs. chicken stock in general for hot pot soup bases?
Hi Rei,
Thanks for the good question. I have always made it with stock, but, like you, I’m thinking that it has plenty of flavor without it. There are so many other strong flavors. I might suggest using chicken powder instead, but I assume you’re trying to get away from meat. I know a trusted commenter above said he’d prefer water to boxed stock for both soups.
Good to know about the saltiness, which is easily adjusted with less douban and/or more water.
Will the copper hot pot ever be back in stock? It is so beautiful!
We hope that it will be. We’ve had two shipments where half of the hot pots were damaged in transit to us, so I won’t order again until I find a supplier who can guarantee that won’t happen. I’m working on it!
I made this Sichuan Mala Hot Pot last night and it was great. I will make it again for Thanksgiving dinner. Thanks a lot for sharing the recipe
Thanksgiving hot pot! I love it. Thanks for letting us know!
Omnivore’s Cookbook is offering a win a hot pot which I believe to be the above. I would like to be entered in that drawing. I have entered at Omnivore’s cookbook too.
Hi Amanda, if you entered over at our affiliate Omnivore’s Cookbook’s page, you were automatically included in the drawing (now closed)! So great to welcome you over here too, hope you get a chance to try this hot pot recipe at home!
I’m wondering about the ingredients of hot pot stock made from scratch.
Chef Wang’s video, at https://youtu.be/EP-QEFopRvQ, calls for tangerine peel, white cardomom pods, etc., and also two more exotic ingredients:
(1) “red cardamom,” cao guo (https://www.spicejungle.com/red-cardamom-cao-guo)
(2) luohan guo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siraitia_grosvenorii).
Li Zqi’s video, at https://youtu.be/zXAqw0Vzr4w, shows the ingredients for exactly one second at 0:36, and I can see five kinds of pods and nuts.
Are these things completely unobtainable? Are some of them obtainable? Much as I love your mix, I’d like to try!
Hi James, thanks for reading and your interest in hot pot!
Good catch with the cardamom. Chef Wang’s red cardamom or “cao guo” is the same as the Chinese black cardamom we sell from Yunnan. Cao guo is a variety of black cardamom, distinct from the common black cardamom used in Indian cooking, also called “red” to differentiate. I’ll work on updating this info so it’s more clear to future customers!
As for luo han guo or “monk fruit” in English, this is used dried and whole, i.e. shell-on (cracked before adding to the stock to expose the interior fruit). While the naturally sweet sugar-replacing extract is gaining popularity in the West, you’ll have more luck finding the whole version in an Asian market or online. Search for “whole dried monk fruit luo han guo.” It’s commonly used in TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) — great for treating dry coughs and sore throats. Definitely obtainable with the right pointers, glad you asked!
Sorry for the late reply, but hope this helps. Let us know what you think if you get a chance to try this recipe!