Tongxiang Casserole Pot 桐乡煲

Tongxiang Casserole Pot (桐乡煲) is a family of spicy one-pot dishes from Tongxiang (桐乡) in Jiaxing (嘉兴), Zhejiang. A main ingredient such as prawns, crab or chicken feet is cooked in a rich broth with side ingredients and brought to the table in one large pot for a group to share.

Ingredients

Shangguan News (上观新闻) names prawn pot, crab pot and chicken-feet pot as the classic versions. On a 2023 visit to Tongxiang, Chao News (潮新闻) reported that snakehead fish pot and free-range chicken pot were the most ordered dishes at one long-running pot shop, and also ate bullfrog and crayfish pots there. At another shop the prawns in the prawn pot were split down the back and deveined, and the side ingredients included chicken feet stewed soft, rice cakes, dried tofu, winter melon and potato.

Flavour and texture

The broth is rich, fresh and spicy. Shangguan News describes it as a secret-recipe base that mixes the fresh sweetness of the Jiangnan (江南) region with the numbing heat of Sichuan cooking. Chao News singles out the rice cakes in the pot as smooth and springy.

Where it comes from

Chao News says people from Hangzhou (杭州) often travel to Tongxiang for it, and that Hangzhou's queue-drawing Pangge Liang (胖哥俩) crab-and-pork pot restaurants share its roots. In 2023 the paper found several of Tongxiang's long-established pot shops on Hongyuan Road (宏源路); the couple running one of them had been in the trade for nearly 40 years. People's Daily Online's Zhejiang channel lists spicy prawn pot alongside Sanzhenzhai (三珍斋) braised duck as a Tongxiang flavour served at the city's 'Tongxiang Ten Bowls' (桐香十碗) food outlets during the 2021 Spring Festival.