Weixian Big-Pot Stew 魏县大锅菜

Weixian Big-Pot Stew (魏县大锅菜), also called Weizhou big-pot stew (魏州大锅菜), is a one-pot dish of mixed vegetables and lean pork from Wei County (魏县) in Handan (邯郸). The county sits at the southern tip of Hebei, where Hebei, Shandong and Henan meet.

What goes in the pot

Chinese Wikipedia lists Chinese cabbage, kelp, winter melon, cucumber and aubergine, cooked together in a large pot with lean pork and pizha (皮渣), which it names as a Wei County speciality. The pot is seasoned with chopped spring onion, ginger and garlic, coriander, salt and more than twenty kinds of spices (药料).

Flavour and texture

The same article sets the dish apart from other local dishes by its heavy use of oil, which it says does not make the stew greasy.

Where it comes from

Chinese Wikipedia links the dish to the county's position at the meeting point of three provinces. Many traders travelling north and south passed through, and to save time the vegetables and pork were boiled together in one big pot, which gave the stew its particular flavour.

How it is served

At a tourism event over the May Day holiday in 2025, reported by Great Wall Net (长城网), the Hebei news site, the stew was cooked in an iron wok 2.5 metres across and handed out to long queues in Weici Park (魏祠公园). Cooks in Han-style dress (汉服) demonstrated how it is made, and visitors helped add firewood and chop the vegetables before tasting it.