Collagen hotpot for brunch on a rainy day!
Rainy Sunday brunch — collagen hotpot. Slow-cooked chicken-and-pork-bone broth simmered into a thick collagen-rich base.
Rainy Sunday brunch with BB — collagen hotpot. Slow-cooked chicken-and-pork-bone broth simmered into a thick collagen-rich base, perfect for the monsoon weather.
We ordered:
- Collagen hotpot (sharing pot)
- Hotpot ingredients (meat, vegetables, mushrooms, tofu)
- Rice or noodles
- Dipping sauces
The collagen hotpot is the Chinese hotpot variant built on a long-simmered chicken-and-pork-bone broth that’s been reduced down until the collagen from the bones forms a gel-like richness in the broth. The proper version uses chicken feet (the highest-collagen-content cut), pork bones, and sometimes pig trotters, simmered for 6-8 hours until the liquid is opaque-cream-coloured and slightly viscous.
The broth was the headline. The colour was the proper pale-cream from the rendered bone marrow and collagen, with the slight glossy sheen that says proper long-simmer technique. As you eat through the hotpot, the broth thickens further as more vegetables and meat release their juices into it.
Hotpot ingredients varied. Standard hotpot spread includes:
- Sliced beef and pork (thin shabu-shabu cuts)
- Sliced chicken
- Prawns and seafood
- Tofu varieties (silken, firm, fried)
- Mushrooms (shiitake, enoki, king oyster)
- Leafy greens (napa cabbage, watercress, spinach)
- Carbs (rice noodles, glass noodles, udon)
The eating ritual is the dunk-and-fish. Each piece of ingredient goes into the simmering broth, cooks for the required time (seconds for the thin meat slices, minutes for the tofu and vegetables), then gets fished out and dipped in the sauce.
Dipping sauces came as a few small dishes — sesame paste (Chinese-style), soy sauce with chopped scallion and chilli, garlic-vinegar combinations. We mixed the sauces to taste.
The rainy day adds the small pleasure of eating hot bone broth while the weather outside is grey and cool. The collagen-rich broth feels restorative — the body wants the warm, fat-rich, salty broth in this kind of weather.
Rice or noodles at the end is the proper hotpot closer. The accumulated flavours in the broth get absorbed by the carb base, creating a final concentrated bowl that’s the most flavour-dense part of the entire meal.
Overall: 4.3 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Solid rainy-day collagen hotpot — would repeat in cool weather.
