There are many variations of this ancient and delicious cooking method. Yao Minji serves up a sampling of eateries to help you find a favorite.

The ding (鼎), a bronze three- or four-legged caldron, is one of the most commonly seen exhibition items related to ancient Chinese history. It is the centerpiece in sacrificial ceremonies and a symbol of state sovereignty and royal power dating to more than 3,500 years ago.

Legend has it that an ancient king from 5,000 years ago divided the state into nine parts and made a ding for each with carvings of the region’s landscape and most impressive images.

Today, people still use jiu ding (九鼎), or nine caldrons, as a metaphor for superior power and prosperous state.

But the vessel was originally a cooking pot used to boil meat. Some consider it the prototype of today’s hotpot, or huo guo (火锅), literally meaning fire pot since the source of fire — wood, gas or electricity — is directly under the pot.

In 2010, archeologists dug out a 20-centimeter-tall, bronze, three-legged caldron with a cover in Xi’an, capital city of Shaanxi Province.

Half a pot of dog meat soup, estimated to be about 2,200 to 2,400 years old, was found inside the sealed round pot with a diameter of 24.5 centimeters.

All over the country, archeologists have discovered caldrons of different varieties and sizes, including the tiny one-person pot; the popular yuan yang (鸳鸯) pot, or hooded skullcap pot referring to one divided into spicy and non-spicy sections; and a pot divided into five sections to boil different kinds of meat.

Smaller containers were also found to be used for dipping sauces, since ancient Chinese also liked sauces warmed on the fire.

For thousands of years, people all around China have been sitting in a circle to watch meatballs and dumplings dancing in a round steaming pot — all kinds of food are put into the pot. The circle means no one is missing, especially important for Chinese in this holiday season.

“I always get friends to come over for hotpot when I’m homesick, especially in winter, when it’s near Chinese New Year and very cold,” says Cindy Lu, a Chinese working in Boston, the United States.

“And I have to go for a hotpot every time I come back (to China) for holidays, even in summer. The smell of the pot with everything mixed inside is like the smell of home,” she adds.

Chinese food is famous for its variety and distinctiveness in different regions, and this style of boiling everything in one pot and serving it with sauce has been combined with regional cuisine and developed into numerous styles.

In recent years, the hotpot has become increasingly popular, expanding to more places with more varieties.

The spicy hotpot from Sichuan Province is probably the most known, for its oily, tasty, chili-filled soup as well as the different animal organs served in the pot. The dipping sauce is oil-based to balance the texture and hotness. Be aware of the heavy smells that can be absorbed by your clothes after an enjoyable meal.

The soup- and seafood-loving Cantonese in Guangdong and Hong Kong use slow-cooked soup as the base and mix all their favorite fish balls, shrimp balls and fish slices into the pot, while a more luxurious version might contain abalone, geoduck and eel, among other expensive ingredients.

The seafood-rich soup slowly squeezes the savory umami from the ingredients and many skip dipping sauces or use light soy sauce-based paste.

Calcium-rich bone soup is another common soup base for Cantonese-style hotpot.

The daily diet in northern regions, including Beijing and Inner Mongolia, contains a lot more beef and mutton, both easy to slice for hotpot, dipped in heavy and rich sauces of chili, sesame and red fermented tofu, among others.

Ham and mushroom are two must-try specialties in Yunnan Province and they have also become the protagonists in Yunnan-style hotpot, adding both flavor and fragrance.

The other kind of Yunnan hotpot is derived from traditional Yi ethnic minority mutton pot. The mutton is roasted to half-cooked before being put into the boiling pot to remove the smell.

In Shanghai and nearby Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, the northern, southern and Sichuan styles have come together into a pot with everything, while some people also like to add herbs and flowers like chrysanthemum and gouqi (wolfberry 枸杞) to make it less oily and healthier.

Ultimately, it is a question of who leads the show — the soup and its content or the dipping sauce — and the answer depends on individual taste. Shanghai Daily handpicks some of the hottest pots in the city that may help find your answer.

Three Travelers

The place, famous for its pig bone soup base, is so named because its small pot is usually recommended for a group of three people.

The large pot, with marrow-rich bones, bamboo shoots, pork and meatballs, is recommended for five to six. That is, if you don’t order anything else and only eat what’s inside the pot.

This is a place to go with family and best friends, the kind you don’t mind being seen holding a large bone in hand and trying to get to the meat stuck on the bone and sucking out the bone marrow inside.

Of course, gloves are available.

Many hotpot venues now serve the base in stainless steel vessels, but Three Travelers still uses the traditional clay pot (sha guo 砂锅), best known for squeezing the essence out of the bones and keeping the flavor and fragrance inside the pot. It is said the older the pot, the better.

In southern China, it is still common for people to boil soup for more than 10 hours in a broken pot held together with thin iron hooks.

Here, the content-rich base soup is the main character. Anything dipped into the tasty soup instantly becomes appetizing in smell and flavor.

Address: 879 Zhaojiabang Rd

Tel: 6469-0312

Cost: 100 yuan per person

Old Lee’s Sheep Spine Hotpot

Yang xie zi (羊蝎子), literally “sheep scorpion,” refers to sheep’s spine since it’s shaped like a scorpion. It is a typical ingredient in Beijing-style hotpot.

Chinese particularly loves the last layer of meat attached to bones for the chewy texture and better taste.

The spine is often cooked in heavy soy-sauce-based soup with chilies, which makes it very hot and would energize you even on the coldest evening.

This venue is one of the very few places where authentic sheep’s spine pots are served, along with sliced mouton that has never been frozen.

You can also order a yuan yang pot that is half sheep’s spine and half white soup base, as well as a soup base containing mouton steaks.

Address: 691 Anlong Rd

Tel: 3208-2825

Cost: 100 yuan

Shu Gong Guan

The Chengdu-style hotpot restaurant is red inside out. Not only the hotpot is fiery red with various kinds of chilies, the place is decorated in shades of red.

Here, most people order yuan yang pot. The white soup is cooked with tomato and herbs, while the red one features a variety of chilies.

Still, for those who didn’t grow up eating Sichuan hotpot, this “light” version is hot enough for starters. The oil and chilies help keep the soup hot, no matter how many ingredients you have put in, and the white soup will be the salvation when your tongue can’t take it any more.

The menu contains almost all the specialties of a Sichuan hotpot. Instead of meat, people in southwest are fond of internal organs, from cow’s blood vessels and stomach to pig’s brain and duck’s intestines. Local Sichuan people will tell you to do the intestines and blood vessels seven ups and eight downs, which means you dip it down and pull it up eight and seven times, respectively, before it is cooked to just the right texture.

The chili-marinated and sesame-seasoned fish slices is a must-try. When it gets too hot, tofu in the white soup can be a good idea to balance the oiliness and spiciness on the tongue, while bean curd is another popular option.

Address: 1/F, 776 Huaihai Rd M.

Tel: 5403-2060

Cost: 100-150 per person

Faigo Hotpot

When you come out of a club at 2am in downtown, tipsy, cold and hungering for sleep, it’s hard to resist the shining light of this stand-alone house on Julu Road, a great, but also very expensive, seafood hotpot venue that open until 4am.

Highlight is the raw ingredients, such as high-quality beef with white fat showing in shiny fresh red meat; the beautifully floating beef, pork, fish and shrimp balls; the luxurious choice of abalone, foie gras and geoduck; and the large shrimp that still look alive on sticks.

The coconut base soup is highly recommended for its slight hint of sweetness, but it doesn’t overtake the flavor of the wide selection of fresh meat and seafood rarely seen on hotpot plates. The collagen-rich tomato and cow’s tail soup base is popular among women for its collagen and also for the flavorful chemistry between the soup and ingredients.

Address: 795 Julu Rd

Tel: 5403-8811

Cost: 600 yuan per person