Li Liang and Zhang Meng stood aside and watched Hu Pingcheng's tinkling iron, chatting with his son without a match.

Hu Pingcheng's son Hu Xiaobin is 11 years old this year, is in the fifth grade, and was pulled to the store by his father to pull the bellows during the winter vacation. Li Liang took out a handful of melon seeds from his pocket and gave him to eat, and invited him and his father to eat in the store in the evening, and soon coaxed him to be happy.

Hu Pingcheng was making the mandarin duck pot while listening to Li Liang chatting with his son, he smiled and said: "Liangzi, don't get used to him, this child hasn't suffered much, and a boy can only grow up if he can endure hardships when he is a child." ”

It took almost an hour for Hu Pingcheng to make a set of mandarin duck pots and bottom supports. There is a slight difference in appearance between the hand-made pot and the stainless steel mandarin duck pot made by the machine of later generations, but the quality is definitely better.

Zhang Meng asked Hu Pingcheng to bring his son and come to the store for dinner in the evening, but Hu Pingcheng refused.

Li Liang said: "Uncle Pingcheng, I don't know how the pot I designed tastes yet, you are the master, come and taste it, so that we can know how to improve the deficiencies!"

What Li Liang said made sense, and Hu Pingcheng had no choice but to agree.

With the pots and pans in hand, the two returned to the store.

The big bone broth boiled by Kang Xinghua is full of white flowers and fragrant. Chen Junhua also made pork balls and fish balls, he saw the mandarin duck pot brought in by Li Liang, and said with a smile: "Liangzi, give me the pot, and I will deal with it." ”

Li Liang handed the mandarin duck pot to Chen Junhua, Chen Junhua took the mandarin duck pot, washed the pot body with hot water, wiped the water and placed the pot on the stove, and dried it over medium-low heat; then he cut a piece of raw fat pork, held down the raw fat pork with his hand, and used the pork as a "soap" in general, and kept wiping the inner wall of the mandarin duck pot in the way from the inner circle to the outer circle, so that the fat overflowed from the fat pork evenly covered the entire pot surface. As he kept wiping it with his hands, more and more melted black lard overflowed from the pot, and the fat pork in his hand became black and small.

Then Chen Junhua washed the mandarin duck pot and repeated the above process twice until the raw fat pork no longer turned black.

This method of washing a new pot Li Liang has seen his mother Wang Xiulan use it before, and it is indeed quite effective.

When Chen Junhua washed the pot and the first guest to eat dinner entered the store, everyone who had been busy for an afternoon realized that it was time to prepare dinner unconsciously.

Wang Fagen and Li Liang were embarrassed to sit in the store, and the two of them and the other two waitresses in the hall were busy together, serving food, wiping the table, and cleaning. The two waitresses are also from the surrounding villages, a little older, both in their 30s, named Liang Ying and Liu Chunlan. The two of them, like Kang Xinghua, came in with signboards when they were preparing for the head office.

After all the guests finished eating, Zhang Meng began to beckon everyone to put the two tables together, Chen Junhua took the bottom tray of charcoal and put it in the middle of the table, and then added Kang Xinghua's boiled bone broth to the mandarin duck pot, and the hot soup rolled on both sides of the mandarin duck pot.

Liang Ying, Liu Chunlan, Chen Zhong, Chen Yong and others brought up the washed white radish slices, carrot slices, lotus root slices, chrysanthemum, spinach, cabbage, green vegetables, coriander, soaked dried kelp, fungus, shiitake mushrooms, yuba, vermicelli, etc. In addition, there are fish balls and pork balls made by Chen Junhua in the afternoon, and ingredients such as pork belly slices, fish fillets, duck blood, bean bubbles, and tofu that were cut in advance.

The steaming hot pot was full of aroma, Zhang Meng remembered that Hu Pingcheng and his son had not yet come, so he hurriedly ran to the blacksmith shop and dragged the father and son who were still striking iron to the store. Then he pulled the monkey who was still sleeping in the store, and the monkey wiped his sleepy eyes, knowing that he was going to eat hot pot, he happily immediately got up from the recliner in his shop, closed the door of the store, and came to Wangkelai.

Everyone was seated, there were many people today, there were seven people including Zhang Meng, plus Monkey, Wang Fagen, Li Liang and Hu Pingcheng father and son, a total of 12 people, and the big table put together by the two tables was full circle. Zhang Meng opened two bottles of Special Laojiao, took care of the two female comrades and Hu Xiaobin, and opened a few bottles of orange-flavored soda.

"Uncle Junhua, you can put the hot pot base!" Li Liang reminded.

"Okay!" Chen Junhua brought over the big iron basin containing the hot pot base, dug up two large iron spoons full of solidified hot pot base, and put it into one side of the mandarin duck pot, and the other side was still a big bone soup.

It seems that there are still some shortcomings? Li Liang thought.

"By the way, Uncle Junhua, please go and add some hot pot dipping sauce. Li Liang said.

How can you eat hot pot without dipping sauce!

"Liangzi, how to match this dipping sauce, you tell your uncle!" Chen Junhua asked.

Li Liang briefly talked about the configuration method of the dipping sauce, and asked everyone present if there was anything that didn't eat spicy, and everyone said that they liked spicy food.

That's easy, just serve it with a dipping sauce. Chen Junhua listened to Li Liang's explanation, went back to the kitchen and used chili oil as a base, with chili powder, sesame pepper powder, millet pepper, tofu milk, and then chopped chives, chopped coriander, and sesame oil to concoct.

"Let's eat!" Zhang Meng beckoned, as he picked up the fish balls and pork balls and poured half of them into the bottom of the spicy pot and the bottom of the clear soup pot respectively, and then put the boilable radish slices, lotus root slices, kelp, fungus, and shiitake mushrooms into the pot.

Everyone's stomach is less oil and water, everyone's chopsticks for the first time mostly sandwiched to the pork belly slices, fish fillets, Kang Xinghua put the pork belly slices and fish slices are extremely thin, a blanched that is cooked, the scalded meat slices are dipped in their respective bowls with dipping sauce, and the taste of the entrance is extremely spicy.

"Delicious!"

"It's delicious!"

"It tastes good. ”

"It turns out that eating hot pot is so delicious!"

Everyone ate happily, and the monkey was the most straightforward, he held a cup and clinked glasses with a few people who were drinking.

Li Liang drank more than one or two Moutai at noon, and he didn't drink anymore at night, he poured himself orange soda.

Chen Junhua and Kang Xinghua are chefs, they picked up two slices of pork belly and lightly scalded them, dipped them in some dipping sauce, the two chewed the meat in their mouths, and nodded one after another, the hot pot base cooked by Li Liang is good, the scalded meat is fragrant and spicy, plus the dipping sauce prepared by Chen Junhua under Li Liang's guidance, the taste is simply amazing.

In all fairness, the hot pot base and dipping sauce cooked by Li Liang are just of an average level, and they may not be anything in the future. But for this group of people who have never been exposed to hot pot food, it is simply delicious.

In this winter, eating such a steaming hot pot is not so good at home during the New Year, and the atmosphere at the scene is extremely warm.