Seafood Broth & Hot Pot Recipe – Lẩu Hải Sản

I have been craving for seafood lately so I stirred up a pot of seafood hot pot, steamed crabs with Louisiana cajun seasoning, and cooked large clams with lemongrass for dinner. I cook the seafood broth in a 12-quart pot with plenty so I can freeze the leftover broth for future use. Mom always make seafood hot pot using pork bone broth but I wanted to document a pescatarian recipe containing only seafood and vegetables ingredients. I purchased the ingredients from Lotte Plaza Market and New Golden Sparkling Market in Orlando, Florida. Snow crab legs and large scallops are from Costco.

Prep and Cook time: 2 hours
Serving: 8-12 people

Ingredients:

For the 12-quart seafood broth

4 small dried squids
1 cup premium dried shrimp (2.5 oz)
1/2 cup dried scallops (3 oz)
4 oz Ginger root
1 daikon
3-5 yellow onion
2-4 small dried squids (2 oz)
8 liter water
sugar* (3 Tbsp)
sea salt* (4 Tbsp)
mushroom seasoning* (2 Tbsp)

For the seafood hot pot: (I bought the following amount for 3 adults and 2 kids to eat for two rounds of seafood hot pot dinner. )

3 salmon steaks
2 grouper steaks
2 lb jumbo size 30/40 shrimp with head-on
14-oz box New Zealand mussels
1 lb snow crab legs
1 dz jumbo size scallops
1 large squid (1/2 lb)
1 lb cuttlefish
1 lb fish tofu
3 boniatos (sweet yellow yams)
1 napa cabbage
2-3 carrots
1 bag rau tần ô (tong ho)
1 bag cải ngọt (yu choy)
1 white onions
2 bags enoki mushrooms
taro root

Hot Pot Dipping sauces: Ummm…that’s another recipe post. I just stirred up some sauces randomly for this hot pot without documenting the recipe. But one of the basic hot pot dipping sauce is sate mixed with soy sauce.

Steamed large clams:

1 dozen large clams
2 lemongrass stalks
3 cups water

Steamed crabs:

1 dozen live blue crabs
1/2 cup Lousiana cajun seasoning
3 cups water

Direction:

1. Cook the seafood broth:

Rinse the dried shrimp, dried scallops, and dried squid once. Peel the onions and daikon, peel and bruise the ginger root. Then put all the ingredients in a 12-quart pot. Fill the pot up with water. Bring the broth to a boil on high heat then lower the heat to medium for an hour or until the dried scallops and onions are soft. Scoop out the onions before it becomes mushy. Discard scum to make the broth clear. Season the broth to your preference with salt, sugar, and mushroom seasoning. Luke heated up the snow crab legs by dipping it into the pot of broth for a minute.

2. Prep the seafood ingredients.

3. Prep the vegetables.

4. Set up the hot pot. Luke Pham is seasoning one half of the broth in the hot pot spicy with some kind of seasoning pouch ….I’ll have to update this part later.

5. Prepping and cooking large clams – I first rinse and soak the clams in water to remove the sand. Then boil enough water with two stalks of lemongrass. Put the clams in to the boiling water on high heat. As soon the clams open up, remove the clams immediately. We added the large clams into the hot pot for a few seconds when serving if it cooled down.

Bonus: Steamed crab wasn’t planned. I couldn’t resist the $2.99/lb deal at the market this weekend so I bought about a dozen female crabs home. I steamed it with 2 cups of water for about 15 minutes and then seasoned it with Louisiana cajun seasoning.

Enjoy!

Behind the scene:

While I was prepping for the seafood hotpot, I kept my little people entertained with two live blue crabs. They had a blast of fun giggling and laughing while playing with the crabs. The two crabs got so tired that they fell into an eternal deep sleep.

These food scraps are going to be added to our compost and edible garden. I heard gardening folks saying that some seashells are good for the soil. I learned that it needs to be pulverized first and may take at least two or more years to decompose. But mama me is a bit lazy so I think I’m going have my kids experiment with this project. They are going to drive over the shells with their jeep, stomp with there feet, and pound it with a hammer to see what works best. We will do our best whether it gets crushed or not and bury it into the ground and lay some at the bottom of a 25-gallon pot. The large clam shells are like rocks so it won’t decompose in this century.