As guests filed into Jenna Zhang and Irene Kim’s apartment in Astoria, Queens, on a recent Saturday night, no one needed an explanation for the array of raw materials before them—marbled sliced meats. tofu fish and roll, fried skins. Chinese cabbage; plump pink rice cakes; and ramen noodles.
Electronic dance music hummed in the background as friends reminisced, discussed plans and asked the all-important question: “How are you? It’s been so long.” They were gathering early for one Lunar New Year party, hot pot feast, a dish that young members of the Chinese diaspora, and increasingly Asian Americans in general, have embraced as festive.
In China, the Lunar New Year, which begins on Saturday, is a time of intense travel and the only time of year when many can return home. For those living abroad, taking a trip can be impossible, either due to finances or time. And many people, less traditional than their parents, leave the traditional home altogether.
Wherever the holiday is celebrated, hot pot offers an opportunity for both loved ones and chosen family to gather around the same steaming bowl, drop ingredients into the communal broth for everyone to grab, and assemble portions for each other. the other one. It is both a meal and an act, enhancing intimacy and nostalgia. (Hot pot is a staple of Chinese home cooking, a dinner shared by family members, with variations across Asia.)
For Ms Zhang, her parents and six siblings, the Lunar New Year was the only holiday they celebrated – “that was the only time, realistically, we were all together,” she said – and hot pot was always on the table.
But the dish was less familiar to Ms. Kim, who is Korean American and was introduced to hot pot by friends like Ms. Zhang. (The best friends turned roommates, the two women, both 23, have a popular TikTok account dedicated to the dinners they cook for each other every night.)
“I really like it,” Ms. Kim said. “And now every time we celebrate something, we have hot pot.”
Tansy Huang, 22, who works at Pike Place Market in Seattle, said his mother always made hot pot for the family when the weather got cold. “Hot pot was a way to show care for each other and keep warm and healthy,” she said.
Unlike traditional Lunar New Year dishes such as pasta and whole fish, hot pot is easy to make — a plus for youngsters who may not have the space or experience to cook multiple dishes. You simply wash and prepare the ingredients and your guests will do the rest.
Zoe Gong, 27, a nutritionist and chef specializing in traditional Chinese medicine, moved to the United States from China 11 years ago and, like many of her friends, has no family here. She threw five hot parties last year, on her birthday and Thanksgiving with the dish.
“It’s a lot of work to cook a traditional New Year’s meal, with fish and everything,” she said, “so it’s a lot easier to use hot pot to celebrate.”
Ms. Zhang and Ms. Kim, who used to cook the dish on the stove, only recently bought a traditional hot pot, divided in a yin-yang shape for separate broths. (Many new cooks, not quite ready to invest in this particular appliance, improvise, even using multi-kitchens.)
For the housemates’ dinner last week, it was topped with savory tomato broth, made from packaged stock to which Jenna added her own blend of seasonings “just in case.” In half of the pot, he added some málà broth — numbing-spicy and bright red — that is the hallmark of Sichuan-style hot pot. A second pot went to another table, for those who didn’t prefer spice.
Michelle King, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the main appeal of hot pot is how conducive it is to gathering. “It’s written in the way you eat,” he said, “the sense of celebration and communion.”
You can pick and choose ingredients as you like, but there are a few requirements: You have to be able to scoop up someone’s stray noodle and guide it back to their plate. You shouldn’t mind banging your chopsticks, loaded with raw meat, against someone else’s in the pot. You’ll have to be game to get to the table and slurp down the last of the leafy greens, then “dumpster dive,” as Ms. Kim calls it, for any last scraps of meat swimming in a now-thick broth. And you should linger—talking, cooking, eating—as long as the meal takes.
“You don’t have to be a family to do it,” Ms. King said. But, he added, “You can’t do it alone. You have to do hot pot with other people.”