What it is
Beef hot pot (牛肉鍋 or 牛肉火鍋) is a pot of broth set on the table, with plates of raw sliced beef for diners to cook themselves. In Tainan and Kaohsiung the meat is often warm beef (溫體牛, wenti niu), slaughtered that day and never frozen. Cuts run from lean loin and marbled loin to shoulder, brisket and tendon.
Where it came from
Taiwan's beef hot pot has two roots. One is the shacha (沙茶) pot of Chaoshan, the Teochew-speaking corner of eastern Guangdong. Migrants from Shantou and Chaozhou settled in Kaohsiung and Tainan after the Second World War, and their restaurants there mainly served shacha beef pots. Shantou Tien Tien (汕頭天天) in Kaohsiung's Yancheng (鹽埕) district dates from 1947. In Taipei, 1970s advertisements in a Chaozhou association journal show several restaurants offering shacha hot pot.
The historian Tseng Lin-yi (曾齡儀) argues that Chaoshan migrants brought shacha sauce to Tainan, that making it gave them a steady income, and that the sauce and the spread of beef eating in Taiwan after 1949 fed each other.
The other root is Tainan's fresh-beef trade. Same-day beef from Shanhua District supplies the city's beef soup shops, and hot pot houses use the same meat, served raw for a brief swish in clear broth. Beef houses in Kaohsiung have it brought in daily from Tainan.
How it is made
Tainan-style broth is simmered for hours from beef bones and vegetables, sometimes with brisket, and kept lightly seasoned so it grows sweeter as the meal goes on. The beef is cut by hand into thin slices or strips and brought raw. Shacha pots start from a different base: one Kaohsiung shop uses fried dried flatfish (扁魚) and pork bones, with a dip of dried shrimp, flatfish, shallots, sesame and peanut.
How to eat it
Swish each slice for a few seconds, until it just changes colour. Tainan-style houses offer soy paste, shredded ginger and bean paste for dipping; shacha shops serve their sauce, sometimes with a raw egg yolk stirred in. Some diners lay slices in a bowl and pour hot broth over them, as with beef soup. Many beef houses also sell stir-fries and braised meat rice.
Around Taiwan
- Tainan
- Tainan's beef houses get their meat from Shanhua. At A-Yu Beef (阿裕牛肉), the founder chooses it at the slaughterhouse daily, and diners pick cuts such as lean loin, marbled loin and shoulder on an order form.
- Kaohsiung
- Kaohsiung has both styles. Hu Dong (湖東牛肉館) in Hunei and Niu Lao Da (牛老大) in Cianjin cook same-day Tainan beef in clear broth, while Shantou Tien Tien in Yancheng keeps to the post-war shacha pot.
- North
- Taipei's Chaozhou restaurants offered shacha hot pot by the 1970s, alongside a wider range of seafood and other dishes than the beef-focused Chaoshan restaurants of the south.
