A very popular and convivial Chinese dish I have talked about before is the hotpot. This dish can be considered as a sort of fondue in which you cook and eat the ingredients at the moment and it is meant to be eaten together with other people. In Chinese tradition, also a “compact” variant of the hotpot actually exists and it is called 干锅, in English “dry hot pot”: it takes inspiration from the hotpot but it is mainly a small pot with the final dish already prepared, so it is “dry” in the sense there is no fondue and there are no raw ingredients to put inside.
This pot is served with a portable cooker and it is meant to be cooked at the table, but this time, you just have to wait until food becomes hot, as it was previously prepared. You order it, you receive it, you wait some minutes and you are ready to just eat it! Being generally small, it can be eaten also by a single person, even if it usually shared with other people, just like it commonly happens during a Chinese meal.
In the photo, a Chinese 干锅 with cauliflower and spicy peppers.
