Hi, I'm Logan!

Today we're going to have some hot pot!

Today is another English Corner video,

so don't forget to turn on the subtitles!

You'll find the Chinese translation there.

-Our special guest for today is Logan! -Hi!

-First of all - Yeah

-小貝 Welcome to my house -Thank you

Welcome to our feast.

It's a beautiful place with beautiful food.

I mean, look at all of this food!

100% great.

So, first things first.

Can you talk a little bit about yourself and your channel?

I'm 小貝 or in English, Logan Beck.

And I'm from America, Utah

And I moved to Taiwan one year ago,

and since moving here, I decided

Taiwan's actually a great place.

The food, the people, the culture,

everything about it, I love it.

So now I make lots of travel videos, lots of eating videos,

and I'll just do lots of fun stuff with that where

I take my family, my wife, and my son with me.

You know, the first time that I watched your video

It was the one where you were eating

I think spicy noodles with your wife.

And then after that I kind of binge-watched a couple

of you travelling.

I think you're kind of like the travel guru.

You go to all sorts of places.

It kind of shames me to say this,

I think you've been to more places in Taiwan than I have.

You know, I've noticed that with most Taiwanese people,

so don't feel ashamed,

I go to lots of places.

So I thought, why not invite you over,

and we can try the hot pot,

we can go over all the common ingredients in English,

and we can eat!

I'm totally down with that!

I love hot pot!

Let's first start by going through all the different ingredients.

So, first off,

we have some veggies here.

The cabbage, some uh...

What do you call that?

Bell peppers?

Some bell peppers, and some red peppers.

And then over here we have the meat, so we prepared...

And it looks wonderful!

Beef and pork.

And then here we've got seafood.

There's the clam...

scallops...

Okay!

...and squid!

Okay!

And these are prawns.

What's the difference between a prawn and a shrimp?

You know, I'm gonna be honest here,

I'm not a seafood guy.

Now, if I remember though,

prawns are gonna be, normally a bit larger,

and where they are kind of living.

And over here we got some rice cakes with

Tofu… how do you call this? Tofu skin?

You know, I don't know.

Tofu skin.

-Tofu skin I guess -Yes

So I guess you would say dried bean curd skin.

Right, and over here we got more vegetables.

This is the Taiwanese lettuce.

This is the Taiwanese lettuce.

Here are some varieties of mushrooms,

and finally we have this whole bowl of

hot pot ingredients.

We've got some fish cake,

we got some taro,

and all sorts of dumplings.

Do you eat this?

Oh this?

The black one?

Oh, the black one!

This is the pig blood's cake.

Oh yes, pig blood's cake.

These are all the more common ingredients that you see in a regular Taiwanese hot pot.

One major thing that we do with our hot pots is the dipping sauce.

Oh yes.

So here we have different things for the sauce.

So garlic, green onions, chili, and soy sauce.

This is what we call a Bullhead barbecue sauce.

This is a must-have for Taiwanese hot pot.

Out of all these,

which ones do you want to try first?

Okay, I am a meat fan.

Okay.

I'm a hardcore carnivore.

If we can just like throw some meat in there...

and then these!

I'm a big fan of these, too.

Enoki mushrooms.

Enoki mushrooms, yup.

These, they're kind of...

they're hard to digest.

Yes.

So...

I learned them in Chinese as "明天見" (lit. see you tomorrow).

Yeah yeah yeah! See you tomorrow, right right right!

So I eat this and these guys,

they're gonna be there tomorrow.

Just a great like little memory of this great meal.

Let's open...

Today we have a pot with a separator in between

so that you can contain two broths within one pot.

This is the Sichuan pepper broth,

and then this one usually we have a chicken broth,

but this time we have a pork broth.

Let's throw it in!

Yeah, whatever amount you want.

Ok, that will do for now.

On goes the lid.

So while this is cooking,

I thought we could

chat a little bit about the cultural differences between America and Taiwan.

The first question that I really wanted to get off my chest:

"Have you ever had hot pot before you came to Taiwan?"

-Yes, I did, yes. -Really?

There was a time when I went to China for a while, and I had it there.

But have you ever had it in America?

-Uh yes -In Utah?

Uh in Utah, no.

But I lived in DC for a while and there I met with lots of Chinese people,

so over the time I had hot pot quite a few times.

You had hot pot in America.

Was it in a Chinese hot pot restaurant?

Uh no, they actually don't have any restaurants,

I don't know one restaurant.

Is there?

Almost every single time it was out of the house, just like this.

Really?

I think in my hometown,

there's one place there and for all-you-can-eat,

which is not even many options,

it's, let's see, going to be 25 dollars.

That would be equivalent to... 800塊 (800 dollars).

That's not too bad, I think.

But then the quality was really bad.

So like the options weren't like many,

the meat wasn't the most fresh,

base of the soup wasn't that good either,

so for 800 hundred dollars, it wasn't...

-Oh, that's not worth it -Yeah

So you don't have a lot of hot pot restaurants in America

It depends where you go。

Where I'm from there's not a large Asian community。

But if you probably go to San Francisco, LA，

there'll probably be quite a few hot pot places but

nothing like Taiwan.

Yeah 'cause in Taiwan,

I think every other shop is a hot pot shop.

So it's something that Americans,

we don't really know about,

and it's not in our culture.

So actually what I like to do in my videos I'd like to introduce hot pot

just so I can show my friends back at home

how wonderful this thing is.

We'll have some places where it's called "fondue,"

Fondue! Okay, yeah!

Which is basically hot pot, but you don't use as extreme foods as this,

and most people use a chocolate fondue.

Yeah, chocolate fondue!

Where it's basically just chocolate

and you just dip things in it.

Another big reason why we don't have hot pot is

'cause Americans, we like to get it all cooked all at once

and then eat it all.

Hot pot, I mean if you look at it in a Taiwan sense,

it's less of a meal,

more of a conversation.

And Americans we like to pound down food and leave the table.

For us to go have hot pot, it takes a long time.

So we'll have big soups

where you put lots of stuff in the soup,

but it's already cooked, all done,

so you could just grab your big spoon and boom boom and eat.

So it's not like, slowly add slowly add.

I agree completely.

It is as much a meal as a social gathering.

Number one rule of hot pot is that

you don't eat with people you don't like.

Yes.

It'll be a bad three hours.

That means I like you.

Oh yes, thank you!

I feel honored.

I think this is about ready.

Let's check it out.

It looks like the prawns have changed colors.

Okay, wow!

This is looking good.

Gorgeous.

So let's eat!

I am so excited for this.

What I think is really special about 麻辣 (Sichuan pepper spice),

it's one that's not initial, but will carry on the more you eat.

And it almost numbs your mouth or 麻 (numbing),

so I think that's my favorite part of hot pot,

'cause it's something so different than American food,

'cause you've got this 麻辣 in there.

The spicy's getting to me!

You want more meat?

This is actually a solid hot pot.

Great broth and the meat's very fresh and the vegetables,

definitely up there in the best ones I've had.

Okay, so we've had our fill.

We ate most of the food here,

but we didn't finish everything and

there's too much.

My mom prepared too much.

Well, I mean, we still have a few hours.

Maybe at night and for supper and for tomorrow's breakfast.

What did you think of the meal?

You know, I'm actually very impressed.

This is really good.

The spicy flavor was unreal and I love the... it was pork, right?

The pork was like actually one of those sweet kind of pork.

There was a nice, soft taste that actually went very well with all the vegetables.

What's your favorite ingredient?

Besides the meat!

Oooh okay, well besides the meat, I got a few.

The enoki mushrooms.

These are really good.

I think so because they hold lots of the spice.

-Because they soak up all the water -That's true, yeah.

And it just gets a really good taste in there as well as all the lettuce.

-I think the key point is 'cause the broth is good, -Yup

that compliments the ingredients

to make them better.

So it's kind of like they play together.

But really the broth is one of the most important parts.

It's a foundation of the hot pot.

So what is your favorite thing?

Well since I can't eat meat,

my favorite thing would be, I think, the seafood.

I'm really a seafood guy.

The prawns did really good for me.

Especially when you cook it in this spicy broth,

'cause it doesn't take up a lot of the spiciness.

It's just fresh.

Scallops and squid,

they're just fresh seafood.

I think as long as the seafood is fresh and it's cooked in a good broth,

it just clicks immediately.

My least favorite it would be all these.

The hot pot ingredients.

I don't like processed food that much.

Something that I don't like in every single hot pot,