The £15 Broth: How to Throw a Proper Hotpot Night Using Nothing but Your Regular Supermarket

There's a particular kind of despair that sets in around the second week of November, when the clocks have gone back, the heating is on a timer you resent, and the thought of another tray-bake makes you want to lie down in the road. This is precisely the moment hotpot was invented for. A pot of fragrant broth in the middle of the table, plates of raw things waiting to be dunked, everyone's sleeves rolled up, nobody looking at their phone. It's dinner and entertainment and a radiator all in one.

The problem is that hotpot has a reputation problem in Britain. Ask around and you'll hear the same objections: you need special kit, you need a Chinese supermarket, you need a whole afternoon. You don't. We built a genuinely excellent hotpot night using two trolleys' worth of Lidl and Tesco and about forty minutes of prep. Here's how it went, including the broth experiments that worked, the ones that didn't, and the rookie errors we made so your guests don't have to witness them.

The Broth Is the Whole Game

Everything else at hotpot is negotiable — the proteins, the noodles, even the table — but a weak broth sinks the evening. We tested five approaches using supermarket ingredients, scoring each on depth, spice and how well it held up after forty minutes of continuous dunking (which thins a broth fast as veg release water).

The winner: the layered base. Start with two good-quality chicken stock pots (Knorr Stock Pots did us proud) dissolved in about 1.5 litres of just-off-the-boil water. Then build flavour in a separate pan: gently fry a thumb of grated ginger, four smashed garlic cloves, a tablespoon of Sichuan peppercorns if you can get them (more on that in a second), a teaspoon each of chilli flakes and smoked paprika, and two tablespoons of doubanjiang or, failing that, a generous squeeze of gochujang — Lidl now stocks both on rotation. Fry until it darkens and smells like the good kind of trouble, then scrape it into the stock. Finish with a teaspoon of sugar, a splash of light soy, and a crumbled stock cube for body.

The runner-up: the miso shortcut. Two tablespoons of white miso whisked into chicken stock with garlic, ginger and a spoonful of chilli oil makes a gentler, rounder broth that children and spice-wimps will happily sit in front of all evening. It's not Sichuan, but nobody's complained yet.

The one to avoid: Thai curry paste. It sounds efficient — it's a spice paste in a jar! — but it drags the whole operation towards a red curry, and once you notice, you can't unnotice. Save it for the actual red curry.

On Sichuan peppercorns: they're the one ingredient worth a special trip for, and even then, most large Tescos and Sainsbury's now stock them in the world foods aisle for about £2. That numbing, citrusy tingle (the málà effect) is what separates hotpot from soup, and no amount of chilli flakes replicates it. If you genuinely can't find them, a strip of lemon zest and extra black pepper gets you a distant cousin of the effect.

The £15 Trolley, Itemised

Here's the full breakdown for four people, priced from a November Tesco run:

• Chicken stock pots × 2 — £1.60
• Miso paste (small tub) — £2.50
• Gochujang or doubanjiang — £2.30
• Sichuan peppercorns — £2.00
• Firm tofu, 2 blocks — £2.00
• Chestnut mushrooms, pak choi, spring onions — £3.00
• Frozen raw king prawns — £2.75
• One pack of straight-to-wok noodles — £1.00
• Thinly sliced beef (ask the counter for stir-fry beef) — £3.00

That's roughly £20 all-in, and note that the miso, gochujang and peppercorns are pantry items — your second hotpot night will cost about a tenner. If you're feeding six, add a pack of frozen dumplings and a savoy cabbage and call it abundance.

Prep Before the Doorbell Goes

Hotpot succeeds or fails on prep, because once people are seated, you don't want to be at the hob. Two hours before, do the following:

• Slice everything thin. Beef against the grain, tofu into 1cm slabs, mushrooms torn rather than chopped. Thin food cooks in seconds; thick food causes bottlenecks and grumbling.
• Blanch nothing, but wash everything. Raw ingredients go straight from plate to broth, so give the veg a proper rinse and drain.
• Make the dipping sauce bar. This is the fun bit: a bowl each of soy sauce with a splash of black vinegar (or rice vinegar plus a drop of malt vinegar, honestly fine), sesame oil, chopped garlic, sliced spring onions and a spoonful of chilli oil. Everyone builds their own — it's the hotpot equivalent of choosing your own adventure.
• Soak dried mushrooms if using — they add serious depth to the broth as the night goes on.
• Cook the noodles separately at the last minute. Noodles cooked in the communal pot turn the broth starchy and cloudy. Don't do it. (We did it. We're still apologising.)

Hotpot on a British Hob: The Safety Bit

In China and much of Asia, hotpot happens on a portable gas burner at the table. In a British rental with a smoke alarm that reacts to toast, that's a non-starter, so induction it is — and it works brilliantly, provided you follow a few rules.

First, use an extension lead only if it's properly rated, and run it flat against the wall so nobody trips mid-dunk. Second, keep the pot at a bare simmer, not a boil — induction holds low temperatures beautifully, and a gentle broth cooks thin slices just as fast. Third, position the hob-side diner as the designated "pot keeper" whose job is adjusting the dial and fishing out stray items. Fourth, use chopsticks with long handles or a small wire spider for retrieval, and remind everyone that food straight from the pot is lava. Every hotpot night has one person who learns this the hard way; aim for it not to be you.

Rookie Table: The Do's and Don'ts

Do put raw meat on its own plate, well away from anything that gets eaten cold.

Don't double-dip your chopsticks in the communal pot after they've been in your mouth. Use the serving chopsticks to cook, your own pair to eat. This is the one hotpot rule with actual consequences.

Do top the broth up with hot kettle water as it reduces.

Don't overcrowd the pot — four or five items dunking at once is plenty.

Do leave room for the final act: once the ingredients are gone, the broth by now is rich with everything that's been cooked in it. Add noodles, a beaten egg, a handful of greens, and you've got the best soup of your week for free.

Don't plan anything after. Hotpot nights have a way of running to eleven o'clock, and nobody regrets it.

That's the whole trick, really. A stock pot, a jar of chilli paste, and a table with nowhere to be. Winter, dealt with.