Come to Mommy, Hot Pot.

Meet his royal hotness, the pork belly hot pot.

What does an MGFD chef do when he has scraps? Make the humble masterpiece that is the Pork Belly Hot Pot, which you can count on being available as a second course choice in our Miami Spice menu until chef de cuisine Bradley Herron tires of it or runs out of meat scraps. Which isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

“I was working the sautee station last Tuesday, and I had to come up with the menu,” he explains of its origins. “I had lots of shoulder and belly scraps. So that’s the hot pot.”

Brad readying his hot pot for my mouth, er, camera.

Oh yeah, that’s what I do in my kitchen when I have scraps of my own, too, Brad! All joking aside this is one seriously tasty dish — and yes it also boasts crispy nubs of pork shoulder.  It’s like a twist on the traditional East Asian hot pot, but there’s no dunking raw ingredients in a simmering metal bowl of broth, here.  In some ways it’s even more like clay pot cooking; Brad uses a cast iron skillet and our wood burning oven, lining up the ingredients including sauteed cabbage (he had leftover from The Stage event) along the sides of the pan and a farm egg cracked in the center. A little moisture from stock and a sizzling beauty is removed from the oven and finished with slices of raw radish for texture, a generous mound of cilantro, and some fresh, housemade noodles for good measure.  My advice? Start by biting into a juicy slab of belly, and watch the steam stream out.