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Marilyn Ong is an editor covering kitchen gear. She has taste-tested more than 350 items, from hot pot bases to hard seltzers. Uncoated Dutch Oven
Steamy windows, simmering broth, icy drinks, easy conversation—a hot pot dinner is more than just a meal, it’s a whole vibe, and one that’s easier to do at home than you might think. Once you’ve stocked your freezer and fridge with a few basics like thinly sliced proteins, fresh greens, and a few root vegetables, all you have to do is fire up the burner and let the night stretch before you as you swish, dip, and eat.
Though there are countless cultural variations of the meal, including seafood-centric pots from Vietnam, fiery chili-packed broths from Sichuan, congee hot pot from China’s Guangdong province, and preassembled Japanese nabemono, they all start with one basic thing: a boiling liquid. Which means, essentially, if you can boil water, you can make hot pot!
If you would like to attempt hot pot at home, or if you’re looking to tweak your setup, we have the gear recommendations and tips you need to succeed. Your main setup requires just two things: a portable heat source for the table and a compatible cooking vessel. In general, we’re strongly in favor of using what you already have in your kitchen. That said, certain tools can make preparing and eating hot pot significantly easier and more enjoyable. And if you’re feeling at all overwhelmed, know this: As soon as you’ve done it once, you’ll feel like an expert. We promise.
I grew up in a Chinese American home where hot pot was on rotation year-round and sometimes served as the big holiday meal, fancied up with some crab or lobster. My family has owned or used nearly every type of hot pot setup, from electric all-in-ones to propane burners with a rotating collection of pots on top (including a large, welded bronze yin-yang pot that my dad scored from a restaurant in Dongguan, China). As a restaurant reviewer living in Beijing, I also dined at many a hot pot joint, including places that specialized in classics like sliced lamb, delicacies like bullfrog, or novelties like robot-made knife-cut noodles.
I’ve been testing gear specifically for this guide since 2020, but for the latest update, we tested burners, pots, ladles, and many of the recommended food items in the Wirecutter test kitchen with several members of our staff.
While researching this article, I also interviewed several food professionals: Lillian Chou, chef, food stylist, and formerly Time Out Beijing’s food editor and restaurant critic; Jing Gao, Sichuanese food expert and founder of the Instagram-famous condiment brand Fly By Jing (Wirecutter independently recommends some of Fly By Jing’s products, including its hot pot base in this guide); and Harris Salat and Tadashi Ono, co-authors of the cookbook Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals. For our latest update, we also consulted the hot pot section in Love Japan, a cookbook co-authored by Sawako Okochi, Aaron Israel, and Wirecutter’s editor of kitchen coverage, Gabriella Gershenson.
The two tabletop-burner options that offer the most control for an easy, frustration-free hot pot experience are either a portable butane stove or a portable induction cooktop. Both have pros and cons, and which one you choose comes down to your preferences regarding feel, efficiency, safety, noise, and a few other, minor factors.
Besides being completely cordless, a good butane burner like this one is quieter than an induction burner and can also work with non-magnetic pots.
If you’re partial to the romance and simplicity of a live flame, or if you want complete portability, a butane burner is best. When we tested this Iwatani burner side by side with an induction cooktop, we found that diners were drawn to the intuitiveness of this burner: One turn of the dial, and you’re cooking—no buttons to press, no temperatures or timers to set. Butane burners also make it easy to cook outdoors or at any table without a nearby outlet, and you don’t have to worry about someone tripping on a cord. Plus, these burners work with any kind of flat-bottomed pot that is safe for a stove, and they’re the best option for a traditional earthenware donabe pot (more on that below).
Noise-wise, butane burners are quieter than induction burners, which are cooled by a built-in fan. They also tend to be quite a bit cheaper, though you pay an extra $2 to $5 per butane canister. Chef Tadashi Ono (co-author of the cookbook Japanese Hot Pots) recommended Iwatani portable stoves, so we tested this relatively inexpensive model and found it to be well built, reliable, and easy to use.
Having to procure butane canisters is the biggest drawback to using this kind of burner. You’re likely to use up at least one canister in a one- to two-hour cooking session, and it’s a bummer to be midway through a shabu session only to have the fire go out on you, so we recommend having a backup or two on hand. Disposing of them properly may also take some effort: My local sanitation department says it’s fine to put empty canisters in the bin with my recycling, but you should check the rules in your area.
This burner is fast, safe, and more efficient than a butane model, but using it requires some learning, as well as a nearby outlet.
Learning to cook with induction takes some work, but it’s worth doing, since induction seems to be the future of cooking. An induction burner has a magnetic coil that generates heat in the pot itself, without the surface of the burner getting hot (other than absorbing some heat from the pot or pan). Cooking on induction is fast and precise, with no emissions or wasted energy as in cooking with a gas flame. This keeps your environs a little cooler—and your fingers a little safer—throughout your meal. Another big plus with induction is that you don’t have to keep butane cans on hand or deal with recycling empty canisters. A good portable induction burner like our pick, the Duxtop 9600LS, is also especially versatile, and you might find yourself using it for your everyday cooking, too—especially on hotter days.
We have to note a couple of caveats. First, cooking with induction requires pots made of magnetic materials and designed with a completely flat bottom, the thicker the better. Cast-iron (enameled or not) cookware and many stainless steel pots are fine, whereas aluminum and ceramic or stoneware pots (such as a traditional Japanese donabe) are not.
Induction cooktops tend to be noisy, too: They make a slight humming sound when in contact with a pan, an effect that some people find unpleasant. Plus, they have whirring fans that run continuously to keep the machine cool.
Don’t forget that you’ll need a nearby outlet—preferably in a spot that doesn’t lend to tripping or fire hazards, especially if you’re using an extension cord or surge protector. (We don’t recommend using both at once; take a look at our surge protector guide for more safety information.)
If you’re feeding up to eight people, we’ve found that any vessel in the neighborhood of 3 to 6 inches deep, and with a volume of 3 to 6 quarts, is the sweet spot for hot pot. (For much larger groups, you may need to have two pots and two burners, or be comfortable with a slower meal.)
Quite a few pots you might already own could work great. All of the options below also work on an induction burner:
On the other hand, if you’re ready to invest in a setup that invokes the beauty or practicality of something more traditional, you might consider a split pot or a donabe.
This thin, spot-welded stainless steel pot won’t win any awards, but it gets the job done for less and can still last years.
This beautiful pot is pricey, but for any household that makes a communal meal often—or entertains with it—this piece is a worthwhile splurge.
May be out of stock
For some people, a pot with a divider is what makes the hot pot experience complete. It’s not the most practical or versatile pot—you’re likely to use it only for this purpose. But if you want the option of simmering two different broths on one burner (say, a spicy mala base on one side and a tamer bone broth on the other), a split pot is the best way. And if you or any of your guests have food allergies or strong food aversions, a split pot is also an effective way to keep the offending ingredients separate (though if the allergies are serious, be sure to use your judgment when it comes to any cross-contamination concerns).
Generic, inexpensive split pots can be found online or at nearly any Asian grocer for around $30 to $40. A couple of years ago, in a pinch, we bought a basic split pot in an older, squatter style from this company on Amazon, and it worked just fine. That specific model appears to be discontinued, and we haven’t tested the newer version, but we did test a similar model from Hoxha, and it served its purpose without issue; it worked great on both the butane burner and the portable induction burner.
On the other hand, if you’re hoping to invest in a beautiful pot that will last, the online spice purveyor The Mala Market works with makers in Sichuan to produce this gorgeous split pot. It’s made of triple-layered stainless steel, with a lovely hammered edge and bolted handles. We found this pot especially inviting, with an extra-wide, shallow basin that made dipping food in and plucking it out easy and fun. Though this yin-yang pot performed well on both the butane burner and the induction cooktop in our tests, it required significantly more heat to keep the broth bubbling on the induction burner compared with the straight-sided split pot, due perhaps to its narrow bottom and wide opening. The more refined seams on the Mala Market yin-yang pot’s divider made it a little easier to clean than the more generic Hoxha Hot Pot.
Donabe earthenware pots are beautiful, carry centuries of tradition, and can even boost the flavors of what they cook. In our interviews, cookbook authors Harris Salat and Tadashi Ono, Fly By Jing’s Jing Gao, and chef Lillian Chou all independently recommended donabe pots from Iga prefecture, like this beautiful pot sold by Toiro. Salat also told us that the tiny bubbles of air trapped in the clay of a donabe make it highly insulating: “Once you get to terminal heat, you could turn off the burner, and the thing is still bubbling because you’ve created so much retained heat within that vessel.” (Cast iron behaves similarly.) However, the material’s porosity also means that it requires special care. “You have to season your pot before it can take direct heat. Cook a rice porridge [in it], and that fills the little holes and makes it impermeable to water leaking,” said Salat.
As with all cookware, donabe prices can vary widely. While the one that Salat recommended represents the higher end, you can also find less expensive donabe, such as this Ginpo donabe from Korin. Trade-offs at lower prices include the size of the pot but also the origin of the clay, the thickness of the pot, and the production process—all of which can impact the donabe’s durability and heat retention. As with a cast-iron or carbon-steel vessel, a donabe is meant to improve with use and can last a lifetime if treated properly.
Once your broth is bubbling away, you should have some utensils on hand for cooking and retrieving your ingredients. You probably already have some ladles or large spoons in your kitchen, and those will be helpful; if you don’t, Tadashi Ono recommends these ladles from Korin. But the real game changers are strainers, as they allow you to scoop up cooked food while leaving the broth behind to cook your next ingredients. I’ve been using this set of strainers at home—they’re inexpensive, they work great, and they’re dishwasher safe. Ono also recommends these slotted spoons—their wooden handles won’t get hot if you leave them in the boiling broth, though you will need to hand-wash them. A tip: Place a strainer in the broth and put a slice of meat or another quick-cooking morsel inside it to avoid losing the food to the depths of the pot.
Chopsticks come in handy, too—we recommend designating a pair for picking up raw meat or seafood from the platters and using a separate pair for collecting cooked food. (Tongs would serve a similar purpose, though they wouldn’t be quite as deft at separating super-thin slices of meat.)
As you start introducing uncooked ingredients into the broth, you’ll notice a layer of foam developing. This is just starch and protein interacting with the boiling liquid, and a fine mesh skimmer is great for skimming that foam throughout the meal.
Before you start cooking, you have some prep to do with the fun variety of ingredients you’ve gathered. This part can be time-consuming if you tackle the job alone, but if fellow diners offer to help, take them up on it. If you set up a few stations (washing, slicing, plating), your group might even be done before you finish your Taylor Swift sing-along.
You likely already have most of the basic prep tools on hand, namely mixing bowls (or a clean, empty sink) for dunking greens and veggies until the dirt and silt settle to the bottom, and a good chef’s knife plus a large cutting board for slicing your vegetables and proteins into faster-cooking pieces.
Using a mandoline if you have one (with some cut-resistant gloves) can speed up the process and make it easier for you to produce consistent, paper-thin slices of ingredients like root vegetables. If you own a food processor, the slicing attachment could pound through prep for you.
To take the pressure off, I like to tell people: Just buy what you like to eat. Get some proteins and veggies you enjoy, cut them into pieces or slices that’ll cook relatively quickly in a simmering liquid, and you’re off to a great start. Of course, there’s a wide world of flavors and ingredients that some cultures have been enjoying for decades or even centuries. We can point you to some of those options and where to buy them:
If you can, buy prepackaged thinly sliced meat from an Asian supermarket (like H Mart or 99 Ranch) near you or from an online Asian grocer (such as Weee or Food Basket). It costs more per ounce, but it’ll save you a lot of time and effort. Look for packages of popular meats like beef, pork belly, or lamb—often labeled “hot pot” or “shabu shabu”—that are sliced nearly paper thin and rolled so they’re easier to use straight from the freezer. This meat cooks in seconds, making for quick, tender bites throughout your meal.
If you don’t have access to prepackaged sliced meat, don’t fret! You can freeze cuts of meat that you like for a couple of hours to make slicing easier and then slice your own using a good knife or a mandoline. The pieces won’t be as thin, and you’ll need to cook them a bit longer, but they’ll work fine.
If you don’t want to bother with thin slices of meat, or if you prefer different proteins, other great options include fish fillets, bouncy fish balls (my kids will fight you for them), shrimp, and all manner of tofu and beancurd, whether it’s soft, firm, deep-fried, frozen, rolled, pressed, fermented, stinkified … you get the picture.
Most hot pot meals feature a mix of root vegetables and leafy greens. You don’t need much per person, since there’s usually so much variety at the table. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, and daikon all work great, and I find taro especially satisfying—its dense, starchy texture is perfect for soaking up broth as it cooks. The fibrous crunch of lotus root holds up nicely to spicy broths and offers plenty of visual interest. Ears of corn cut into chunks are a fun addition and great for kids. I tend to slice most of these vegetables thinly, between an eighth of an inch and a quarter-inch thick, so that they can cook quickly in the broth. (The chunks of corn can be larger.)
As for leafy veggies, some regulars include spinach, pea tips, napa cabbage, and herbaceous chrysanthemum greens. Most vegetables work well, so buy what you like. Be sure to wash them well and to separate them into individual leaves or stalks for easy cooking. Cut larger leaves, such as from napa cabbage, into thirds or fourths.
Don’t forget about mushrooms! Enoki mushrooms are a must, personally, but mushrooms of all kinds (shiitake, button, morel) would add, and soak up, fantastic flavor as they cook. Big, stalky king oyster mushrooms can be sliced thinly and are a great meat substitute.
Beloved by our staff and family members alike, this soup base is one of the cleanest-tasting and most fragrant you can buy for enjoying hot pot at home.
Canned or boxed broth or even plain water can work as a base but is a little bland to start with. You can rely on sauces for flavoring the food at the beginning, and the broth will intensify in flavor the more you cook in it.
Our staff loved Fly By Jing’s Fire Hot Pot Base (and it’s my family’s default at home, too). The sauce company uses fresh, high-quality peppers and aromatics to produce one of the cleanest-tasting and most fragrant hot pot bases you can buy. At $20 for two, these packets are more than double the price of other popular premade bases, but the quality and flavor are absolutely worth the investment—especially for entertaining or a special occasion.
If you’re looking to save, however, Chinese hot pot restaurant chains like Haidilao and Little Sheep make delicious options, too. You may want to try a few to see which flavors you prefer. We found Haidilao’s mushroom variety to be a nice complement to the spicy Fly By Jing base, while the tomato flavor was a little too oily and bland.
In many versions of hot pot, it’s customary to finish off the meal with a starch of some sort, cooked in the flavor-packed broth. I’ve used all kinds, depending on the group’s mood: Rice, noodles (wheat or rice), udon, and bean thread vermicelli are popular options. For quicker cooking times and less starch in your broth, you can cook wheat-flour noodles beforehand. With more delicate noodles made from rice or mung bean, you can soak them in water first but cook them directly in your broth.
Common at-home dipping sauces tend to fall into three main buckets: shacha, sesame, and soy-sauce based. Shacha is a seafood-based barbecue sauce popular in Taiwan, and this Bullhead version is iconic. Shacha fans often loosen up the briny, shrimpy paste with a raw egg and vinegar and then spike it with fresh aromatics such as garlic and cilantro. It’s a great accompaniment to seafood and vegetables.
Sesame dipping sauces, their cool creaminess a lovely counterpoint to spicy broths and the richness of beef and lamb, hail traditionally from Northern China. This Lee Kum Kee sesame sauce is a great basic sesame sauce to start with, though you can also purchase sesame paste to make your own. If you’re doing the latter, you need to thin the sesame paste with water or broth and season it with salt or soy sauce. One variation on a sesame sauce, from the recipe blog Omnivore’s Cookbook, includes fermented red bean curd and leek flower sauce for some funky umami.
Soy-sauce-based dipping sauces are very choose-your-own-adventure. Start with a few glugs of soy sauce, and then add any combination of rice or black vinegar, sesame oil, chilis, garlic, scallions, garlic chives, cilantro, and even condiments like chili garlic sauce or yuzu kosho. Often, hot pot hosts set out all these ingredients (plus the shacha sauce and sesame paste) for guests to build their own sauces based on the levels of spice, acid, and aromatics they prefer.
But again, you can discover endless variations on dipping sauces, and balance is key. For example, according to Jing Gao, the tallow-enriched soup base for Sichuanese mala hot pot is so rich and deeply flavored that it’s often paired with a simple dipping sauce of minced garlic in a pool of sesame oil. (Make sure to buy a pure sesame oil, such as Kadoya sesame oil—it’ll keep much better, and a little goes a long way.) You can find more great advice about soup bases, sauces, and ingredients—including recipes—in the hot pot guides on Serious Eats and the food blog The Woks of Life.
You’ve assembled your ingredients and prepared your soup bases and sauces, and everyone is ready to eat. What do you need on the table? Here are the essentials:
I’ve repurposed so many items to hold ingredients for hot pot at the table, including but not limited to cutting boards, pie plates and other bakeware, and even sheet pans. But if you want an excuse to shop for something new, this understated oval platter from Jono Pandolfi, which we use in the Wirecutter test kitchen, is great for rows of sliced carrots, taro, daikon, sweet potatoes, and the like. And this straight-sided Hasami porcelain bowl from Tortoise General Store (one of Harris Salat’s favorite ceramic shops) would make a beautiful vessel for a bouquet of assorted fresh greens.
It’s fine to combine vegetables while you’re serving, but it’s a good idea to keep raw meat or frozen proteins (such as fish balls or egg dumplings) separate so that you can pack up unused, uncooked food without fear of cross-contamination.
If your table space is limited, you might also consider pulling up a folding TV tray or a rolling cart (like our staff favorite, the IKEA Råskog cart) next to the table to expand the surface for your ingredients.
As with any communal cooking experience, hot pot is bound to get a little chaotic. But since you’re working with raw ingredients at the table, we do have some helpful tips for keeping the flow of cooking safe and a little less stressful:
At some point, everything will settle into a rhythm, bellies will fill, and diners will sit back, satisfied. You’ve done it! Pat yourself on the back and take a swig of pineapple beer.
If you have an Instant Pot or a slow cooker, you may be curious about using it for hot pot. Though these appliances can work in a pinch, they can’t give you a great hot pot experience. Because a slow cooker can take a couple of hours to bring liquid to a boil, this Reddit thread suggests boiling your broth separately first, while also preheating your slow cooker’s insert with a pot of water to reduce thermal shock. That’s a lot of work, and once you’ve set everything up, there’s no guarantee that the slow cooker can continuously maintain safe cooking temperatures while you’re adding cold ingredients. An Instant Pot’s sauté function might hold a boil better, but that appliance is a little too tall to comfortably use at the table—you would probably need to stand up every time you add or remove food. On top of that, on some Instant Pot models, the sauté function shuts off automatically after 30 minutes, so you would need to restart it midmeal. With either appliance, you may find yourself trying to cook raw meat in broth whose temperature you can’t control well, and that’s not only un-tasty—it can also be unsafe.
If you happen to have an old-school electric skillet around (something like this model), that would be a better choice, as those rectangular or square vessels usually have a pretty good depth and shape for hot pot, and their heat controls are a little more precise. If you take this route, be mindful of how you position the cord, as you would with an induction burner.
The latest version of this article was edited by Gabriella Gershenson and Marguerite Preston. This article was originally published in 2020.
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Marilyn Ong is a supervising editor for Wirecutter’s kitchen team, covering everything from ice cream makers and Instant Pots to toasters and trash cans. Prior to this, she was an arts and then restaurants editor in Beijing, and she also took time away from blinking cursors to be a caretaker for her three young kids. Cooking for her family gave her a healthy obsession with finding the best affordable tools for the kitchen—but when she’s cooking for herself, all she needs is instant ramen and an egg.
Ceramic Cast Iron Pots And Pans Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).