Location: Chongqing — The City Built on Fire
Soup in Chinese cooking is never an afterthought. It’s medicine, it’s ritual, it’s the dish a grandmother simmers for two hours because she believes — and she’s not entirely wrong — that patience itself is a nutrient.
Chongqing doesn’t so much sit in its landscape as climb it — a municipality of over 30 million people stacked vertically up mountainsides where the Yangtze and Jialing rivers meet, connected by so many bridges, funiculars, and elevators that some apartment buildings have their “ground floor” entrance ten storeys above the street below. It’s one of the most vertical cities on earth, and one of the hottest, earning it a spot among China’s traditional “Three Furnaces” for its brutal summer heat.
That heat might explain the food. Hot pot, Chongqing’s most famous export, is thought to have started with river dockworkers who threw cheap offal into a pot of boiling, chili-laden oil strong enough to mask any funk and warm enough to fight the damp. Today Chongqing hot pot — with its trademark yin-yang divided pot, one side blazing red with chili and Sichuan peppercorn, one side clear and mild — is considered the definitive version by hot pot purists across the country.
At the centre of this chapter sits hot pot — not really a soup at all, but a shared pot of simmering broth that turns dinner into a two-hour event. Ten recipes fill this chapter, from a ten-minute egg drop soup to a beef tendon broth that asks for two and a half hours of your Sunday. Whether you’re making a quick Tuesday broth or setting up a full table-side hot pot, this chapter is built for the long simmer.
Recipes in This Chapter
- Hot & Sour Soup
- Silken Tofu Mushroom Broth
- Wonton-Style Soup with Cabbage Wrappers
- Mongolian Lamb Hot Pot
- Pork Belly & Daikon Soup
- Egg Drop Soup
- West Lake Beef Soup
- Winter Melon & Ham Broth
- Sichuan Beef Tendon Soup
- Watercress & Pork Rib Soup
From the stockpot to the wok — next up is Noodles & Rice Alternatives.