As a passionate hot-pot fan who grew up with the buffet-in-a-pot in both of my cultures (I’m from Hong Kong and Hawaii), I long thought of hot pot as an activity you do outside the house since both of my hometowns are teeming with restaurants catering to hot-pot lovers. I’m also a professional chef, which means that as a home cook, I’m particularly lazy — and if you’re making hot pot yourself, the prepwork can be very involved. You need to wash and cut all your vegetables, thinly slice your meats, assemble your noodles, whip up your dipping sauces, not to mention prepare the most important part of the hot pot: the broth. All of that is to say that when I heard about Fly by Jing’s at-home hot-pot starter set — which promises to easily re-create the hot-pot experience at home — I was very intrigued.
Reasonably priced at $130, the set comes with two packages of Fly by Jing’s hot-pot Fire base (made with broad-bean paste, ginger, garlic, star anise, and many more spices) along with an electric hot pot consisting of a stainless-steel bowl set onto a hot-plate-like device and a glass lid; two notched stainless-steel ladles; and two pairs of metal chopsticks. It’s also very attractive with a brushed red exterior that recalls traditional lacquered rice bowls. It’s extremely lightweight, and I could see myself throwing it into a tote bag for an impromptu hot-pot dinner at a friend’s house. The pot holds two quarts of liquid, is nine inches in diameter — compact enough to leave plenty of room on the table for the hot-pot ingredients — and has a 44-inch cord, which is not long enough for me to plug in directly from my dining-room table, so I have to use an extension cord.
One night, I made dinner for my cousin (the pot is well sized for feeding two people, though it can accommodate three more), and I melted the Fly by Jing base into chicken broth in the pot. It quickly heated up on the dial’s highest setting (three flames), and we cooked up an array of vegetables, noodles, and thinly sliced beef. Toggling the dial to the lowest setting (one flame) allowed me to maintain a gentle simmer for when we were slurping and not cooking.
While at restaurants hot pots tend to have two compartments, this vessel has only one chamber, so we needed to commit to one type of broth. Hot pot is a dish that forces diners to communicate and share as they simultaneously cook and eat together. It’s a great bonding activity as you have to negotiate with your fellow diners, taking turns dipping your respective meats and vegetables and determining the level of heat — both spicy heat and temperature heat — of your broth.
I’m wary of kitchen appliances that have only one application, but the Fly by Jing pot’s instruction booklet suggests that other foods besides the typical hot-pot ingredients can be heated up in it. I used it as part of a breakfast buffet on my kitchen island for weekend brunch at home, and it really came in handy. I was using all four burners on my stove for eggs, fried rice, sausages, and sautéed vegetables, so the hot pot was perfect for heating up potatoes. I lubricated the pot with some neutral algae cooking oil and then popped in my parboiled potatoes straight from the refrigerator. I turned the heat setting to two flames. This setup was life-changing. The hot pot kept my potatoes soft and warm in the middle and hot and crispy on the outside. This cannot be achieved with a buffet steam table or a Crock-Pot held on its “warm” setting — both devices I would ordinarily reach for when hosting breakfast buffets. Cleaning up after brunch, the pot was super-easy to gently scrub clean with a sponge.
The Fly by Jing hot-pot set would make a great wedding gift (the brand makes wonderful gift sets with other items as well) and would be much more versatile than a fondue pot — but it’d be great for making fondue, too.
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