Tiantangzhai Hanging-Pot Stew 天堂寨吊锅
Tiantangzhai Hanging-Pot Stew is featured among the local specialties of Anhui.
Tiantangzhai Hanging-Pot Stew (天堂寨吊锅) is the one-pot meal of the Tiantangzhai (天堂寨) area in the Dabie Mountains (大别山) of Jinzhai (金寨), Lu'an (六安): an iron pot hung from a roof beam over a fire pit, filled with cooked meats and vegetables and shared by everyone sitting round it. A Tiantangzhai chef quoted by Anhui News calls it the most authentic form of Jinzhai hanging pot (金寨吊锅).
How it is made
A wooden slide bar hangs from the roof timbers above the fire pit and holds an iron pot that can be raised or lowered. The main dishes are cooked first: chicken, mutton, beef, dog or wild boar, according to China.org.cn. They go into the pot over a bed of 'pot-lining' vegetables such as jiangjun cai (将军菜), day-lily buds, wild bamboo shoots, royal fern and pearl vegetable (珍珠菜).
For hanging-pot chicken, Huang Shan (黄山), chef and manager of a restaurant in Tiantangzhai town, picks free-range birds, mostly cockerels, marinates them in the sauce Tiantangzhai people make at home and cooks them in lard. Onion goes in first to stop the pot catching over the charcoal, then shiitake mushrooms, which can be cooked together with pork; local tofu skin is cooked briefly in the chicken broth.
How it is eaten
The pot is served with acorn tofu (橡豆腐), red tofu (红豆腐) and pickles on the side. Family or guests sit round the fire pit, warming themselves while they eat and drink, bowl in the left hand, chopsticks and cup in the right. Anhui News says it is best with the locally brewed xiaodiao liquor (小吊酒). Mountain households ate it through the long winter, but China.org.cn describes eating it at Tiantangzhai in every season: to birdsong in spring, in tents over charcoal in summer, under the moon in autumn and round the fire in snow.
Where it comes from
China.org.cn traces the hanging pot to mountain households who lived deep in the forest, far from roads and short of supplies, and dates it back at least a thousand years. A local saying quoted by China Culture and Tourism News, 'hanging-pot food and a stump fire: apart from the emperor, there is me', is used to sum up how good it tastes. In March 2024 the Tiantangzhai scenic area held a three-day hanging-pot feast for a thousand diners, built on farm-raised pork and chicken.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.