Yiyang Malatang Skewers 益阳麻辣烫

Yiyang Malatang Skewers (益阳麻辣烫) is the skewer form of malatang (麻辣烫, "numbing-spicy scald") eaten in Yiyang (益阳), Hunan: meat and vegetables threaded on bamboo sticks and cooked at the table in a pot of red chilli-oil broth. Xinhunan, the Hunan Daily news app, calls it the best-known malatang in Hunan, and notes that most shops have no name of their own and simply hang up the sign "Yiyang Malatang".

How it is eaten

According to Xinhunan, Yiyang Malatang Skewers keeps closer to the original form of malatang than the malatang now in fashion. Everything is strung on bamboo skewers and scalded in the boiling broth, and diners pick the skewers they want and strip the food off into their bowls, a way of eating called laotang (捞烫, "fish out and scald"). At a Changsha shop serving it in the traditional way, diners sit round the pot, each with a small bowl, season it to taste and ladle in a spoonful or two of the broth. The Yiyang Daily describes the same thing at the city's malatang fair: sitting round the pot and choosing your own skewers.

Ingredients

At a long-running shop near the north gate of Yiyang's City College (城院), Rednet found meatballs, beef tendon, ham sausage, potato, spinach and sweet-potato noodles laid out in the pot, with pork lung, beef tripe, fried tofu, seaweed (海白菜) and quail eggs among the skewers. The shop's own mix of crushed garlic, chopped spring onion and chilli powder is served alongside for seasoning.

Where it comes from

Malatang began in Sichuan (四川). The Yiyang commerce bureau organised the city's fifth malatang fair, held in July 2026 outside Wanda Plaza in Heshan (赫山), which brought together 18 vendors chosen from the 2025 Yiyang Malatang Food Map. At the 2023 Yiyang culture and tourism food week, China News Service reported, a Forbes world-record adjudicator certified a 50-metre table set with 80 pots and more than 100,000 skewers as the world's longest malatang table.