Taiwanese Style Thanksgiving Dinner

While you guys are enjoying your Thanksgiving turkey,

I'm having my very own Asian style Thanksgiving dinner here.

Taiwanese Style Hot Pot-

(It was still cooking so I had to quickly take a picture,

Otherwise the heat will run out,

And no one has the patience to wait for another 5 minutes)

Basically what we do is cooking all the ingredients together with light chicken stock,

And those ingredients can be quite different and adventurous base on your own preference:

Cabbage, corn, enoki mushrooms,

Pork, beef, chicken, lamb,

Egg dumplings, shrimp dumplings, fish dumplings,

Intestine, stomach, tendon,

Ramen, udon, instant noodles,

Pork balls, Beef balls, fish balls,

Crab, Scallops, Lobsters,

Mochi, cheese balls,

You name it.

Here's our not so fat beef of the night-

People sometimes are confused between hot pot and shabu shabu,

Here are the two biggest differences:

Shabu shabu usually use water or water with conbo (dried seaweed) as their soup base;

Whereas Taiwanese style hot pot use flavored stock for it.

Also there are some differences for the dipping sauce,

Shabu shabu usually comes with sesame/miso sauce and ponzu sauce;

Whereas Taiwanese style hot pot uses Chinese Barbecue (Sa Cha 沙茶) or soy sauce.

Egg dumplings and scallops-

Ingredients Parade-

Most of the people just buy the pre-made chicken stock from the grocery store,

What can I say? It surely saves a lot of time and energy.

But this year,

My friend's brother actually made the soup by stewing the chicken meat and bones for hours,

It tastes pretty good,

Fresh and healthy.

So when I was glad that I don't have to chow down thousands of calories this year with turkeys, gravy, mashed potatoes, and pies,

Cupcakes and red bean soup showed up in front of my face all the sudden....

Oh well,

We only have one Thanksgiving a year,

Just let me eat.