For Natasha Pickowicz, Hot Pot is an At-Home Affair

Most people think of hot pot as something you go out to do, something done at a restaurant with specialized equipment. But for James Beard Award finalist and cookbook author, Natasha Pickowicz, it’s a meal that’s best served at home, with friends and family crowded around the eponymous cooking vessel.

Some assembly is required, but hosting a hot pot party is not as complicated—or as expensive—as one might think. Natasha’s newest book, “Everyone Hot Pot,” is no mere collection of hot pot recipes. It’s a complete guide for sourcing, shopping, hosting and serving, and a very approachable guide at that.

Listen to Natasha’s full interview with Chris Kimball on Milk Street radio, then read on for Natasha’s best shopping tips, equipment recommendations, and her tried and true equation for knowing exactly how much food to buy.

This book really makes hot pot seem so easy and accessible, which is kind of the point of the book, right? It's “Everyone Hot Pot.”

I think hot pot can be a little overwhelming, especially if you’ve never done it before. It's very like, “Where do I start? Where do I dig in? What do I need?” I think the best cookbooks give you that framework, but they also give you a chance to make it your own. They meet you where you are, and let you adapt things to your style, your resources, your environment. That was a lot of fun, just being like: “How can I play around with the format? How can I show people how I like to do it, but also be like, 'Well, now I hand it over. Now you go.'”

I'm just so jumping-out-of-my-skin excited to see people doing their hot pot feasts. And like, actually getting to see that in action, which has already been happening, because I've been doing these hot pot dinners in New York for the last five years or so. But I think, at least in New York, hot pot is really more known as something that you go out to do. You go to a restaurant and you have hot pot. But when I was growing up, it was something you did exclusively at home. And I think it's much more successful in that context.

What is the bare bones, minimum setup you need for hot pot?

I think the one non-negotiable is some kind of power source, so you can keep the broth at a simmer while it’s at the center of your table. That is the one thing that you need, because you're cooking very small bites of food, a la minute, throughout the meal. A comparable thing might be fondue or Korean barbecue, or something along those lines. It's an interactive meal that happens in front of you. No one's setting a cooked plate of food in front of you. The whole idea is that it's this interactive, repetitive back-and-forth motion. So I would say the bare bones is that heat power source at the table.

I try to give people some options around that. Maybe it's something like an all-in-one piece, like an Instant Pot or a Crock-Pot, where the cooking vessel is also the thing that's being heated, and you plug it into the wall. Another variation on that would be an electric hot plate or induction [burner], which you can plunk your pot on top of. I like the romance of seeing the open flame, so I really like the gas-powered camping stoves that can live outside or be used indoors. You can get one of those at Lowe's or Home Depot for 25 bucks, plus a pack of gas for $6 or $7.

Photos by Alex Lau

From there, you can cobble together all the things that you need from things you might already have. Maybe that's a soup pot, stock pot, or a Dutch oven—something to contain the broth or water inside. And they have special hot pot toppers that are great for hot pot, because those have compartments. This is where things can get really fun. It's a $20 or $25 investment that essentially doubles what you can do, because now you can have two kinds of broth. That's great if there are people in your group that are vegan or vegetarian. You can also curate the broth to be complementary or contrasting—like with a spicy broth and a non-spicy broth.

Other than the literal hot pot, it seems like the other thing you really need is just something to fish the food out and some way to move soup to the bowl.

Exactly. This is not an ideal solution, but I use a tea strainer. Really, you just need some kind of mesh basket, and a scooper for pieces that you might have a hard time handling with a fork or chopsticks—like slippery tofu or bulky clam. Maybe it's a slotted spoon or tongs—just something that lets you go into that pot and retrieve your bite. You can all share it, because you're not eating with it.

And some of these hot pot wire mesh baskets are so cheap—like a dollar. You can literally bend the handle and kind of hook it against the side of the pot, like it's sitting in a Jacuzzi. Then you can go hands free. It won't float away—you'll be able to keep track of it—and it will contain the bite while it cooks in the broth.

Generally speaking, you want to select items for your hot pot that cook quickly and are cut to be bite-sized. Let's say it's a leafy green. You're holding it in your with your chopsticks. You're kind of swishing it around in the broth. You might only need to do that for 10 seconds, and then you can fish it back out. Otherwise, traditionally, you'll throw in a handful of stuff all at once, and then—once things look cooked—you'll pull them out with your chopsticks, or with a fork or that little basket.

I love the idea of bending the handle so it can just sit there.

I think that also plays into this idea that hot pot is not precious. You're giving someone a utensil, and you're telling them they can bend it and manipulate it. It's not this pristine thing that's untouchable, that has to look perfect. It can be a very disarming way of eating, because the level of interaction is so high: you're really rolling up your sleeves. I think that's what makes it so fun. You're kind of gamifying this meal, in a way. When I was little, it was my favorite thing in the world, because it wasn't my parents putting a plate of food in front of me and being like, “you have to eat this, and you can't leave the table until you're done.” I have a little agency. I can kind of just dip in and out and choose what I want and make a bit of a mess. And I think there's something kind of exhilarating about that, whether you're eating with friends and family that you know really well, or with people that you don't know well at all. And this is what the book is about—building community, creating bonds, fostering intimacy.

I know you said it's not precious, but are there any faux pas that people should avoid?

Photo by Alex Lau

It's funny, I was just talking to my mom about this, and she's very like, “There's no wrong or right way to do this.” But putting in ingredients and not taking ownership over them when they're cooked...they kind of become mush in the pot. I think you want to be mindful about that, and not cook more than you can eat in that period of time.

When you have raw ingredients on the table, like uncooked meat and uncooked seafood, it's nice to have utensils that are devoted to just to handling them, so that you're minimizing potential cross-contamination. The tongs that you pick up your kale or scallions with probably shouldn't be the same ones you're picking up raw chicken with. That's definitely a common faux pas.

Also, I think it’s important to try not to hoard one specific prize ingredient at the table, like a platter of thinly sliced wagyu beef, or a tray of scallops or something like that. The idea is really to share, and to make sure that everyone has access to all of the different things on the table.

Speaking of ingredients like wagyu beef, how do you keep from spiraling out of control when shopping for ingredients?

I was really inspired by [my book] “More Than Cake”. I had a layer cake equation where I'm like, “Build your perfect layer cake with a sponge, a creamy filling, a flavorful soak, and a seasoned butter cream” or whatever it was. So I wanted to also give that framework in the hot pot context.

Because you walk into a grocery store and you're like, “Fuck, where do I begin?” My rule of thumb is: a leafy green, some kind of starchy veg, a protein. Maybe that's tofu, maybe it's meat, maybe it's seafood. An aromatic herb, and some kind of condiment to build a dipping sauce. I also like to recommend some kind of carby accompaniment, whether it's noodles or a scallion pancake or a frozen dumpling. It's nice to have that on the table as well.

Once you hit those categories, you can emphasize the things you really love. Maybe you love the idea of having lots of seafood. You can get a sliced fish filet and a shellfish. Maybe you like mushrooms. You can do a shiitake and a smaller mushroom, like enoki. In general, my recommendation is just variety. If you wanted multiple kinds of meat, it might be nice to have a leaner cut, like a lamb shoulder, and then maybe something richer, like a pork belly. That way you’re hitting multiple areas of satisfaction.

I noticed in the book that you have an actual mathematical equation for the volume that you need for each person.

That was something I had to hone when I was doing the hot pot dinners, because I was like, “How much of everything do I buy for 120 covers for a service?” Because I always have this tendency to over-order. In the hot pot context, that’s not necessarily not a bad thing, right? Because you're basically just buying ingredients. If you have leftovers, well, now you just have spinach for the week, and you have meat for your stir fry, and you have pantry stuff. So that's nice, because it's just raw ingredients, right?

TIP BOX: For each guest, you will need: 1 pound of vegetables, 6 ounces of starches and 6 ounces of protein, plus 1 quart of broth.

But I did want to be realistic: “OK, plan for 18 ounces of food per person.” Which is a lot of food. And this way you can be like, “OK, 2 ounces of veg, 2 ounces of this.” Food shrinks once you cook it down, right? When you put these raw ingredients out, it can look super-bountiful. But then once you put that slice of meat in, it's just the tiniest, thinnest sliver of meat. So you're actually eating a lot less meat than you think. It's a very satisfying meal where you're not having an 8-ounce steak, you're having 2 ounces of thinly sliced beef.

You recommend a few store-bought things like, dumplings or maybe scallion pancakes, but that is not the case with the broth. Why is that?

I was just at the Fancy Food Association trade show, and there was somebody giving away these hot pot starter kits, for the broth. These kinds of things are pretty common. I'm not here to yuck somebody's yum—if there's a broth starter pack that you like, keep going with that. I think what I'm trying to do is provide my version of how I like to make broth from scratch, which gives you more control over the quality of the ingredients used, the potency of the spices that are incorporated, the richness and fat.

But a lot of these traditional soup packs are basically bags of fat, with spices and flavorings are sort of suspended in them. And they tend to be heavy, and have preservatives and palm oil. They tend to be really high in sodium. As a chef, I prefer a little more agency over how that broth comes together, because that is really the cornerstone of the hot pot experience.

I also think there’s something satisfying about the process of making broth. You're spending a few dollars on bones or whatever, and you're making something that's incredibly nourishing. I love having broth kind of rolling in my home for hours, filling my apartment with those great smells and steam. So I'm really trying to encourage people to build out the kinds of pantries where they have kombu for making a dashi, where they have Sichuan peppercorns for making a beef broth, where they have fresh carrots and celery in their fridge for giving that aromatic backbone to broth. I think that's a really useful skill to have.

Photo by Alex Lau

And I think, again, this is why hot pot at home is a much more satisfying experience. The quality of the broths are are superior because they're made from scratch, and not from a bag. That being said, I also wanted to kind of throw my own wink towards some of those seasoning packets. So I have a hot pot bouillon that you can store in your fridge for a kind of instant soup. I have the tea bag broth, where it's like a just-add-water kind of thing, to show how you can really create a complex broth with minimal time and ingredients, and with just a handful of dried, potent base flavorings.

I’m so excited to make the bouillon.

I wanted it to look like 90s sand art.

It does!

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.