Dry pot chicken

Origin

There are two main opinions about the origin of dry pot chicken.

1. The dry pot chicken’ s origin traces back to ancient cottage village Guizhou people’s eating habits. As a featured intersection of Guizhou, Jiangxi and Hunan cooking method, it first appears in the Miao ethnic people’s house. Ancestors dug a small round hole in their yard and placing firewood and charcoal. In the middle of the hole, they put stone pot on the top of wood. This is the so-called “fire pot”, which is the prototype of the dry pot chicken.

2. The second explanation : Dry pot derives from the north area of Sichuan Province. Because most dry pot chicken restaurant owners prefer to seeing Chongqing(used to be the north-east area of Sichuan) as the origin place of this dish, they claim what matters is which place really popularizes dry pot chicken.

The dry pot began to spread to every corner of China as Sichuan labour forces went to the southeast area of China to find jobs. Millions of Sichuan migrant workers went to big modern cities carrying their hometown cuisines. In the following years dry pot naturally swept the whole country, therefore, dry pot chicken is everywhere even in Hong Kong now.

Comments

“it’s more a method than a recipe, and because it’s easily and infinitely adaptable to any ingredients you like and happen to have on hand. Because it’s pretty hard to mess it up. And because it tastes so much like Sichuan.” “Hot (warm) and spicy food was always my cure for seasonal depression in those dry windy cold Beijing winters...Guess the flavorful food demands a lot of mental resources in order to fully appreciate it and therefore you don't have much left to process your own little sadness.” “Hot pot’s strengths are also its weaknesses. Fish ball and bone marrow alike lose most of their essence to the boiling water. By the time that errant crab stick gets fished from the bottom and dipped inma jiang, the only thing to distinguish it from a hunk of dried tofu is its texture.”

Influences

Eating dry pot chicken has been a routine in Chinese daily life. With both delicious taste and low price, dry pot chicken is becoming more and more popular. People come into the restaurant, order a small chaffy dish, and then talk with strangers sitting next to them, with whom they will soon become friends. Dry pot chicken brings this fashion trend to the 21 century’s Chinese culture. From the northern part of Heilongjiang in China to the southern part, Hong Kong and Macau, people have dry pot chicken as home-style dishes. There are distributions from more than 3000 shops in Shanghai, Jinan, Chongqing, Beijing, Nanjing and even Hong Kong. Although they vary in forms, they all came from the same origin——dry pot chicken.