This year is the Year of the Rat and Chinese New Year officially runs from 25 January to February 4th. Unfortunately living in a small rural town means that there are no public events celebrating Chinese New Year, however we had a small hotpot dinner at home to celebrate!
We recently purchased our hotpot with electric grill from one of Aldi’s infamous Special Buys. Although not completely authentic to Chinese New Year, I was still impressed by their Lunar New Year Kitchen and Cooking theme.
For our hotpot, I kept things simple with chicken stock, corn and shitake mushrooms as our soup base. For the hotpot ingredients we had a small array of vegetables, fish balls, noodles, tofu, liver, and prawns. For the grill we had sliced ribeye steak and pork belly.
The dipping sauces are one of my favourite parts of a hotpot and we had oyster sauce, sesame oil and freshly minced garlic. The fresh garlic makes all the difference!
Wishing everyone a prosperous, healthy and happy new year ahead!
Marie xo