Very fresh beef, cut to order by the part, dipped for seconds in a clear broth and eaten with shacha sauce.
What makes it teochew beef hotpot
Fresh, unfrozen beef, sliced thin by the cut — shoulder, brisket fat, shin, tongue.
Each slice dipped for only a few seconds in a clear broth.
Springy hand-beaten beef balls in the pot too.
Shacha sauce to dip.
Where it comes from
A newer classic than most: beef hotpot shops are usually traced to Shantou in the twentieth century, and the style boomed across China from the 2010s. The beef is butchered that morning and never frozen, and a menu names a dozen cuts, each with its own cooking time.
The broth is plain on purpose — beef bone and daikon — so the meat tastes of itself, and the flavour comes from the dip: shacha, a savoury paste of dried fish, shrimp, garlic and spices that Teochew emigrants are said to have brought back from the satay of South-East Asia.
How it varies
Beef ball soup
The beef balls on their own in clear broth, a Shantou breakfast.