 Hot pot intoxication is sinking in right now. It's a little bit like being drunk. We're in the same room with burning fire, so we're actually running hot. Everybody, welcome to another Beijing episode of Fung Bro's Food. We're here with the Beijing Plug diesel. What up, what up? We've eaten a lot of food on this trip, but what we haven't showed you is hot pot. A lot of people, they don't really associate hot pot with Beijing. Beijing hot pot is a very iconic type of hot pot because of the pot it's in. It's a bronze pot. This is actually my favorite style of hot pot. An old statement. I always say that. I feel like a lot of people come just have a duck or two, which is great. I guess the duck is like the base against you, right? So you got to get the Beijing style hot pot. Okay. I've experienced every type of Beijing cuisine. It looks like we're about to step into a Chinese movie. Or the... Based in history. Or bit in kingdom. Beijing hot pot in Beijing. Harry, Queen, Frosty. Yeah, they got to do it with Frosty. They flip the plate and show you the meat as fresh. Because if the meat is fresh, it's going to stick to the plate. Those are the smallest jiaozi dumplings I've ever seen. I like so the skewer that it's on, it's not your average skewer. I love the quality because I actually see them clipping off some of the charred pieces that are going to get too burnt. What would you say? Is this like a... This is pretty good. It's actually very family friendly. This is the Beijing style broth mix. So basically it's just water at its base. There's nothing else. However, there is a sliced white part of a Chinese leek jiaozi. Goji berries, nori sheets, aka edible seaweed, sliced ginger and dried shrimp. These cuts look different than America for sure. What you have is actually like combustion kind of technology. The source of the fire is actually like an alcohol base. The heat is rising up. There's a hole right here where the heat escapes from. So it's pulling an oxygen from below. And it takes combustion up top. We have arrived here at the authentic Lao Bei Jing hot pot. Look at the sauces guys. Normally there's a gigantic sauce bar. This simply just has one bowl of mahjong. Let's do like an inch. The sauce is ready to go. You don't need anything else. I know you don't like to use these, but can you explain to me what these are? The leek sauce right here. And then we got our fermented tofu sauce. Almost like a ma tofu. I think it's just straight with salt. Alright Daniel, I need you to break down the six different meats that we are looking at. I was going to be straight because this is kind of like their signature hand cut lamb. This is called a yang shang no. It actually translates to brain. It's not the brain. This is the meat around the spine. Is it because it looks like a brain? It looks like a brain. Right. I noticed that probably nobody in the states has seen a little hand style hot pot lamb. Just dip it in a few times. Dip it in a few times. Just throw it in there for like about 12 seconds. Yeah, 12 seconds. Lamb shoulder. I'm so excited guys. Oh, I'm done. It tastes like almost like a melted yang ro chuan in the mouth. Give that a five. Alright. A five. Try the salad real quick. So this is a mahjong style. Literally being a tiger salad. Onions, cucumber and chili. This is good. We have a yang ro chuan break to the three musketeers. One for all. All for what? Eat that. All for lamb. That is incredible. Amazing, man. You rarely ever get skewers this fatty. This is the first thing I've eaten on this trip that actually completely obliterates what we have available in 66 even. Wow. Look at that. This is part of the lamb. Lamb leg. Oh my goodness. This is good enough. You don't want to overcook lamb. It is like shabu-shabu in the fact that you kind of wish it yourself until it cooks. You don't leave things in there. That was bad either. This one's leaner. You know what I love about the salad and you pointed out earlier? Because you're eating what you're cooking. We have different people in and out arriving at different times. They're still going to be able to enjoy just as much. Do you think that making it individual is that more of a modern thing? This is more of actually a skewer. Right. The royals always had access to their own pot. So we're eating like three royal rich guys from back in the day. Is this the same one? This is another part of the lamb. I can see because there's a deeper red that turns into a lighter pink where this was one color all the way through. A different part of the lamb. You know how the word shabu-shabu comes from shabu-shabu? It's like whooshing your meat. Is there a Chinese equivalent? Yeah. That sauce is so perfect. Then we are at the last of the lamb. This is the lamb belly. It's a frozen piece of meat that gets sliced. Lamb belly. Shwani shwani shwani shwani. Once it's great, it's good. Oh man. I do appreciate about the frozen lamb. It really allowed me to get a lot of mahjong surface area. Freshly fried. This looks bone. No mahjong. Really well on this baby. Oh, that's a really clean hot. It's really fresh. That's a hot sauce. I'm not getting any other. Plum drink. In a bottle, that looks like a plum. Fatty lamb. If you see me, I'm trying to shoot V-roll while eating at the same time. Oh my gosh. This is tastier than the other lamb. These are like smoked salmon. I don't even know how many parts of the lamb we ate, including the char. What was your favorite piece? Yeah. The spine of the meat. I agree. It's a perfect blend of fat and lean. Mahjong. I think those two. Obviously the premium lamb cuts were competing for number one. But you know, I really enjoyed all of them. Even the one that was kind of like your classic frozen, blander one. I'm still cool. While we wait, shall we partake? It's in the sides. Side dishes. Classic thousand year old egg. Is that garlic on top? That's ginger. Oh, it's ginger. Yo, this might be new. That's the same sauce that Dad makes when we eat crab. It's vinegar and ginger. That is such a familiar flavor to us, but it's such an unfamiliar dish. You have a pile of what looks to be actually tofu mashed up for a minute, and it's also got sesame. Mahjong food. That's good. There's literally still the soy bean in there. It kind of tastes like a hummus slash baba gnomes. Oh. That would taste good on some like, like on a guac. On a guac, we, when you saw these getting made, you were like, yo, those are fire. These are fire. And then when they came, you rang the alarm. You said, stop. When I was frying, that was baked. In general, it's called a shalbi, right? But in Beijing, this is called shalbi. And you eat it only with hot pot. I dip it in mahjong. Oh, man. It's unbelievable. Wow. To be honest, I wouldn't say they're super different. I actually prefer the baked ones. Nick, we had this in Shanghai. Mmm. Those leaves break down so quickly. Purely straight chlorophyll in that. I was switching the beef section. Hey, the beef section is not the biggest section this time. Usually, you know, when you're in the States, they're going to have more varieties. No, you're going to get like four beefs in one lamb. Yeah. Beef? In hot pot, it's like, yeah. What part of the beef is this? Everybody. I just came from America two weeks ago. I don't like the beef. The top lamb here is better than this beef. But this is ranking above some of the lamb for me. All right, you guys, we have cleared through all the meat. What are we left with? We have frozen tofu. Is there a reason why it's frozen? Do you think it's better? When it gets frozen, it gets horsed. What do you think? It's a squid meatball, a lamb meatball, and a shrimp. One of each, sir. Here, guys. David's favorite triad. Oh, my goodness. When I was shooting around the restaurant, one of the servers, he held this out to me and was like, shoot that. We kind of treated it like a piece of meat. Yeah. Wait until it kind of gets hard. You got to look quickly. Here we go. Lamb tripe. This is definitely the gamey part of it. Yeah. It tastes really lamby. Tripe is about as gamey as I'd like to get, but I enjoy beef tripe. That was some of the better tripe I've had. I'm not going to lie. I may have to wash it down, you guys. David, you're not a tripe beast. The tofu's done. It's porous. So what happens when it's porous? It's actually going to soak up all this chili oil that I just dipped it in. So this is going to be stupid hot. I think the balls are ready. They're floating to the top. And shrimp ball? It was cool, but that ain't the place to get shrimp. No. Probably shrimp by itself is better off. Next up, we got the squid ball. All means these are fresh fish and shrimp balls, okay? So they are high quality. Mm. Aging is 120 miles away from water. So it is landlocked. So that is my theory of why the shrimp ball would not be the number one choice invention. I thought that squid ball was really delicious. It had great flavor. A lamb ball. A lamb ball is why these balls exist in the first place. A lamb ball. Wow. Thank God. I'm going to say this is the best meal that I've had in days. You know, I don't know if that's a commentary on where we normally have been eating. Can't see. Where we came. The skin of a turnip. Pretty inoffensive, bro. Roots. Skin of a turnip. When you look at it, you're going to think that it's probably fruity though. I'm just going to have to say it's not sweet, but it's not bad. Look at these miniature jars. Design a cookie better. There you go. It's a lamb dumpling. Yo, that's crazy. This is probably a third of the size of an actual dumpling. Hand-made this, man. You think the higher person would just fall on hands with me. Maybe when the guy's getting hired or the girl's getting hired, they like show their hands and like, Show me your hands. You're going to be making the mini dumplings. And for me, hot pot intoxication is sinking in right now. It's a little bit like being drunk. Let's just say, did you feel under the influence of something? We're in a contained room with burning fire, so after running out of oxygen, slightly. There's a lot of CO2 in the air. Daniel, we are actually down to our last three dishes. What are we looking at? The first veggie we're going to have. Seaweed. There you go. This is going to flavor the broth. This is some handmade noodles. Freshly hand-pulled. Daniel, you're so northern, bro. I remember when we went to your house to eat jows's once, and then you're like, Yeah, I don't even really eat rice at home. The rice maybe has eaten, like, what's the week? Got the winter melon. Why do people like winter melon? It doesn't really have a lot of flavor. To me, I think it's the texture. I love the name of winter melon. It's Dong Hua. It's a sort of simply liberal translation. My dumplings are floating. Dumplings good. Hey, Beijing hot pot. Beijing hot pot. If you guys know the general hot pot rules are generally starches. Go later. Roots go earlier. Seafood would also theoretically go later. Because the starches and the seafood would change the broth. And the roots actually, like how do we got lotus root, takes super long to cook, right? The small hat style hot pot is due to the speed. It does cook a little faster due to the more cooking surface area. Aren't you guys hopefully that was useful in introducing Beijing hot pot? Like we said, there's so many different styles, but Beijing hot pot has got to be one of the oldest. Do you consider the Mongolian version older? I think hot pot itself is a very Mongolian tradition that I think was entered China, became localized in different regions. There was a Jin dynasty, and these people were northern fighters that are not necessarily Han, but they kind of became Han. But they're not Han. They're like Siberian Asians, basically, that took over China. And then they fought the Mongolians for 23 years. And while they were fighting in that 23 years, the Mongolians were eating hot pot. And then the Mongolians won. And then it became the Mongolian dynasty. How come so many non-Han groups have ruled over China? Three distinct ones. One is, I think, Jin. There's also Yuan Chao, which is the Mongolians, right? And then you have the last one, which is the Qing dynasty. The Manchurians, exactly. But then they're all kind of these really strong fighter groups from the north, right? They're very good at war. But they're not as good at maybe civilization and arts and infrastructure. What are these... Starts the definition for Han people. You draw up all the way back to the Han dynasty. I think genetically, people have changed over time as well. I think there's so much history wrapped up in the food. And that's why I love having you as our Beijing plug and our food expert. I think you're really good at drawing in the anthropological, cultural... I think there's so much history behind food, especially when you talk about Chinese food that has been around for maybe the first iteration has been around for hundreds to thousands of years. Clearly the people who came up with the concept of this restaurant, they understand history. It's almost like everybody in China understands a lot of history through food. Would you say that's why when you talk to a lot of working-class Chinese people who maybe have not... who didn't go through a lot of formal education, they still understand a lot about the history. Or even just the food itself. To understand it, you have to somewhat understand history. I mean, this is very macro, big historical talk. This is what I love. Very Bourdain, RIP. Shout out to Anthony Bourdain. I'm just a micro food enjoyment level. Is this your favorite style? Personally, for me, I think the clear broth, which is just water, ginger, some seaweed, some onions, that's, I think, the best type of pop-up. Hey, I'm with you there. If you made me pick super sauced-up broth or clear broth, I picked clear. There's a beauty in the clear broth, and I feel like that we didn't really appreciate that as much until we got older. So you go with the clear broth as your base. What is it? Just lamb? I think hot pot is the only mental lamb, to be honest. I think beef... Wow! Daniel's speaking like a true Chinese man.