Steamboat 火锅

Steamboat 火锅

Setting the table and getting the food ready for the steamboat dinner

Steamboat is my family's favourite choice for reunion dinner. We like our steamboat light and easy after a heavy lunch of steamed chicken and various meat dishes which were prepared for ancestral worship. Steamboat is pretty easy to prepare and there is literally no "slaving over the hot stove".  It  largely involves cleaning and washing vegetables and getting our favourite seafood items together on the dinner table. The "cooking" is done by dipping pieces of food into the hot boiling stock. If you are particular about sauces, then you have to make your own chili sauces or ginger sauces. As for my family and I, it is just cutting a couple of chili padi and squeezing the juice from one small lime into the chili padi and soya sauce. This chili padi and lime sauce is a great dipping sauce for seafood. 

Ingredients

2 litres of clear chicken stock
10 medium-sized prawns
2 cuttle fish ( the pre-soaked variety )
2 tins of canned abalone
30 pieces of sui-kow dumplings
1 kg jelly fish, soaked one day in advance. You need to change the water several times

1 can of sea asparagus

1 packet of bottle-shaped mushrooms ( or Hang Pau Koo in Cantonese ) 
2 packets of inoki mushrooms

1 handful of glass noodles, soak in water until soft

4 large leaves of Wong ngah pak, wash and cut into sections

1 small head of Chinese cabbage, wash and cut into bite-sized pieces

1 small head of lettuce, wash and cut into halves

2 stalks of Chinese celery, wash and cut into sections

Chili Sauce

8 chili padi, cut into small pieces
1 small lime, squeeze out the juice
2 tbsp soya sauce

Mix the ingredients together and you'll get a hot, and sour sauce

 Canned baby abalone

A plate of wrapped sui-kow dumplings. You can read up my previous post on how to make sui-kow dumplings

 2 pre-soaked cuttle fish, cut into small pieces

Canned sea asparagus

 A handful of glass noodles, soaked in water until soft

 Medium-sized prawns, trimmed and washed

 3 bottle-shaped mushrooms, cut into thin slices

Inoki mushrooms

Chinese cabbage on the left and lettuce on the right

Bottom : Chinese celery cut into sections

 

Jelly fish, soaked overnight and cut into small pieces

4 leaves of wong ngah pak, cut into sections

Place the steamboat over the gas stove

Instructions

 

1.  Prepare all the ingredients and place them around the steamboat.
2.  Fill the steamboat to two-thirds full of clear chicken stock
3.  Place the steamboat over the gas stove and bring the stock to the boil.
4.  Add pieces of the above ingredients into the stock and boil them until cooked.
5.  Dip the cooked food into the chili dipping sauce
6.  Enjoy !


Note :  You can use store-bought chili sauces of your choice, tomato sauce, hoi sin sauce or just plain soya sauce.