With the weather cold, there is nothing better than to gather your friends and family to enjoy a Hot Pot dinner. All you need is some fresh ingredients: seafood; meat and vegetables; a pot filled with water and a portable tabletop stove. It is quite similar to fondue except this is a full course meal.

To make this Hot pot dinner, you need to cut your choice of meat to thin slices; if you pick seafood, they should be wash and clean. Choices like shrimp with shell, scallop (bay scallop is good) or even fresh lobster, which should be cut into pieces, are perfect. Your choice of vegetables should be washed and rinsed. 

Bring your pot of water to a boil, then transfer the whole pot (with the hot water) to the portable tabletop stove, turn it on and it's ready to cook. Just pick up the food you want to eat – meat or shrimp, put that into the pot, wait a few minute, then scoop it out and eat it plain or dip it into soy sauce or your own dipping concoction. 

You need to prepare a few ingredients for making the dipping sauce like minced garlic, ginger, scallion, chili, cilantro, soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, hoisin sauce, mustard, chili sauce are great choices. Put them in separate bowl and let your guest create their own dipping sauce. In fact, this is one of the favorite things my friends love with this meal is mixing their own dipping sauce. Some of them comes up with really tasty concoction that have become their signature sauce. 

For the base, I like to use plain water instead of broth. With all the food being cooked in this water, it will turn into a very flavorful broth after a while. In Sichuan, they serve their hot pot broth base with a lot of chili, sesame oil and peppercorns, making it even hotter!

Every year on Winter Solstice, which usually falls on December 21 or 22, I will host a hot pot dinner. Chinese has a phrase that said Winter Solstice is more important than lunar new year. In the old days where most Chinese were farmers, they would stop their work on this date and head home. They would recuperate till spring comes, where the important farming season begin. So it's their yearly break and its the only time where they could spent quality time with their families. For decades, family dinners are being held on this date, it's like Thanksgiving dinner to American.

There is no set menu for dinner, but dumplings are usually served. They symbolizes fortune and prosperity because of their money pocket or gold ingot look. Cantonese like to serve sweet dumplings instead (see picture). In the old days, my grandmother would wrap a small gold coin inside the sweet dumpling and whoever got would received a big “laisee” (red pocket with money inside) from my grandmother.

You can use any type of ingredients, the more varieties, the more enjoyable it will be. The guests can cook and eat whenever and whatever they want. Since all ingredients are freshly cook, the nutrition are lost to the least, it's actually healthy in our book. So try it on your next get together and you will understand how fun and enjoyable it will be.

If you have a Chinese supermarket by your area, they might even have thinnly sliced meats, seafood and other ingredients ready for your Hot Pot dinner.