Duoduo Rice Tofu Hot Pot 夺夺粉

Duoduo Rice Tofu Hot Pot (夺夺粉) is a claypot hotpot from Anshun (安顺) in Guizhou, eaten by spearing pieces out of the pot with bamboo skewers. Guizhou Daily (贵州日报) calls it a street food found only in Anshun, and it is on the city's municipal list of intangible cultural heritage.

What goes in the pot

Diners first choose a base: sour soup (酸汤), sour and spicy, or fragrant and spicy, according to a Colorful Guizhou (多彩贵州网) piece reprinted by Guangming Online (光明网). The item everyone orders is the duoduo fen itself, commonly called rice tofu (米豆腐). Guizhou Daily lists the other ingredients kept in stock as liangfen (凉粉, cold starch jelly), erkuaiba cakes (二块粑), frozen konjac, crispy fried pork (酥肉) and seasonal vegetables. The base grows thicker and richer the longer it cooks, and Colorful Guizhou recommends ordering minced meat for the pot and eating it mixed with rice.

How it is eaten

The name comes from Anshun dialect, in which duo (夺) means to spear or poke something. The rice tofu breaks easily, so it is picked out of the pot with bamboo skewers. Guizhou Daily describes the dish as a cross between small-pot liangfen, malatang (麻辣烫), sour-and-spicy tang (酸辣烫) and claypot hotpot, with a Guizhou sour-and-spicy flavour, and says it is served with iced rose water to cut the heat and the grease.

Where it comes from

Guizhou Daily traces the dish to the 1990s, when an early form appeared around Dalishu (大梨树) on Anshun's West Street (西街) as a roadside liangfen snack popular with students, eaten simply by dipping skewered pieces in roasted chilli (糊辣椒). Over more than thirty years the flavour was refined and the format changed into a claypot sour-soup hotpot, and the stall snack grew into a restaurant category of its own before it was added to Anshun's municipal heritage list.