Surviving Sichuan’s Spiciest Hot Pot Challenge in Chengdu

layered flavors here at Sichuan spicy sea Factory they're mass-producing hot pot base for over 100,000 individual restaurants in China this Empire runs smoothly under the watch of this man put it there thank you for having us in your hot pot Factory I have so many questions I'm very curious about this place question one how many times do you sneeze per day they get used to it this this is normal oh my God it's like getting in my eyes it's getting in my throat in my mouth in my nose it's Pleasure and Pain combined but also a little bit hungry it's making

you hungry yeah meet dah home a full-time food influencer with an obsession for hot pots he'll be my eating comrade for the day I want to get into the food first of all how much of this are you making each day 80 times per day that's wild first a 600 lb mix of mostly beef Tallow with a little bit of rape oil fill the vessel once it hits the right temperature massive heaps of garlic dive into the oil to oil to fry here they heat up a giant pot that can hold up to 12200 lb of product they got more than 20 recipes in their Factory now I thought maybe you're

making one type of Hot Pot base for all these different restaurants but he's making multiple different recipes depending on where it's going yeah hot pot has evolved into over 30 variations across China since it first appeared more than a thousand years ago this Factory specializes in all types of Sichuan Hot Pot among them the chongu Hot Pot we're trying today how many ingredients are used here including all the different variations of Hot Pot you make 40 kinds of spices that doesn't mean that everyone is going to have 40 but there could be variations

including up to 40 different ingredients that's pretty wild whatever twist to the recipe Restaurants May introduce numbing and spicy are the two must have Sensations in a Sichuan Hot Pot created by two special ingredients first off the chilies but not not just any kind of chilies this one is Ching chili it's most popular used in haa Bay D good morning chili farmer also good morning my man what's your name you're growing chilies that people are eventually going to be using for Hot Pot does Hot Pot require one certain chili or are there a bunch of

different chilies folks use in sesan they use virus of chilies but Chien chili is most important cuz it's fragrant and super spicy originating in Sichuan Province this is one of the hottest chili peppers in southern China with a Scoville score of up to 100,000 about the same as a Thai chili and just below a habanero Chien chili is quite expensive so the restaurant won't use entirely chish and chili in a pot they will use 30% of Chien chili and 70% other cheaper chilies and what makes these other chilies cheaper the other chili will grow faster and this

kind of chili is not that spicy and not this kind of Aroma the tip of the Ching chili it's sweet he said I don't know let's try all right it's kind of sweet but also very spicy it is a little bit sweet a bit fresh it's really aromatic it's almost like a like a flower he said no way I'm full of it he say yes you agreed yeah so this is one of the main important key ingredients in our hot pot base but there's one more thing we're going to see out here in the countryside that is absolutely essential that is unique to Sichuan this is the Sichuan pepper corn

some Americans might be confused when you say pepper and corn together but actually all the black pepper eaten in America is pepper corn that got ground out into black table pepper but this is something completely different Sichuan pepper corn is practically unavoidable in sesan it's the defining flavor of the Region's Cuisine these were dried they're baked they're chopped they're scattered amongst so many of the different street foods I tried my whole mouth right now is vibrating despite its name the Sichuan pepper corn doesn't come from the the pepper

family but the citrus family An Origin that gives it a unique taste that no other ingredient can replicate also called hot po l means spicy m means num when you eat pepper corn fish over the tongue will go num so that means you can't feel your tongue yeah you can feel your tongue then the Oro will go numing if you eat a lot the stomach will start a little bit numing when you eat too much your face is a little bit numbing really yeah you can try it try it it it's very green a little grassy somewhat sour a bit of citrus to it oh oo it's crunchy on the

inside yeah the seed is in there oh wow just one is so powerful wow the numbing I chewed it on my right side so the right side of my face on the inside is going numb so how long is this going to last I don't know maybe 12 minutes did you make that number up yeah it's fresh it's really fragrant a bit citrusy like a sour orange I can't believe how fruity it is and so appetizing right a bit a bit confusing it's so new for me my man it tastes like I put a fruity 9vt battery on my tongue it's like a jolt of electricity have you ever put a battery on your

tongue never car battery even no no soon I'll experience the power of Sichuan peppercorn combined with xi- Ching chili in three completely different hot pots ending with one that may just break my anus it's called Juan in Chinese means arle and time means disable arle disable arle disable put first these fiery ingredients must join the others in the making of the hot pot base fresh Chili Peppers go into the giant pot of swirling beef Tallow and garlic next fennel a secret spice blend requested by the restaurant chili bean paste Sichuan pepper sauce and a

bucket full of even more beef Tallow this is the final step and they're letting me do it I can't believe it right here we have what they call chili red it is basically a natural food coloring that's going to give it that beautiful red color that we desire in our hot hot base let's put it in in there oh the heat the smell everything is just radiating from this massive walk in just about 10 minutes from now this is going to finish cooking and they're going to dump it out it'll be ready for portioning after that once it cools down a bit but man cooking on a

massive scale I've never seen anything like this when it comes to Hot Pot I love it this is the hot liquefied hot pot base it's full of oil flavor garlic and chilies it's so hot hot and steamy I mean this is essentially what you get at the restaurant right now you could get a skewer put your meat in there cook it and eat it straight away except for the fact that they gave me this so I wouldn't wouldn't eat what the heck from here the Hot Pot base is either packed into small portions to sell that grocery stores or delivered in large batches to restaurants

and that is where we're headed now welcome to a room few have seen before this is the Hot Pot broth back room that nobody ever gets to see when they come to a restaurant like this right now I'm with the owner of this hot pot location sir put her there for over 28 years Mr Lee's restaurant has been a trusted destination for authentic traditional hot pot with a recipe that dates back over 1 Century we already went to the factory where they saw them make this right here this is the Hot Pot base and there is a lot of it this thing must weigh at least 6 to

700 lb the base is chalked full of chilies peppercorns there's pennel there's star anise there's a little bit of everything in there and it smells amazing oh God all right that that will not wash out easily you have to be careful I recommend not wearing white shirts to locations such as this right here we have another component this right here what he has is beef Tallow and it's soaked with all the same flavors of the base but this is just a pure oil so before the Hot Pot broth heads to your table to get melted down he's got to combine these two elements

he takes a little bit of base and he puts it in the bottom of the pot and then the oil my God I cannot believe how much oil goes inside this is ridiculous Mr Lee adds even more heat to the Hot Pot base with a bowl of chilies he dilutes it with water then leaves the task of eating to dong and me this is my first taste of the true traditional chongu Hot chongu Hot Pot first of all this thing is boiling like crazy is this kind of normal you just keep it going like this yeah we just keep going like this I love it we have all these different assorted Meats

around us what should we start with we should go with slic Yak this is a strong thing to start with all right let's go for it show me the way just diping give it a little bit of a dip so this is why all this meat is sliced so thin we put it in the boiling oil and water and it just takes a short time to cook all the way through it's okay well it's Yak I don't think Yak has to be well done it's not pork not pork cheers M it's tender and juicy right mhm nice juicy soft but pretty lean it's not a fatty kind of meat wow is the finish it's all wow wow the heat

it builds slowly it's like a warm glow that keeps growing in intensity it is also a little bit of that mouth numbing effect that you get from those peppercorns woo it's intense yeah that's why I hot yeah it's very addictive what should we try next let's try slice wangu wagu wangu wagu wangu wag W you you Wu now this is completely different from the yak because this has the nice marbled fat give it a little bit of a dip I think that's good I think it's good so this is our dipping sauce minced garlic cilantro scallions and a small can of sesame oil create

chungu hot pot condiment of choice we're cooking the meat in oil we take it out of the oil and then we dip it in some oil you just quiet it's not tastes like oil it's very fresh what do you think I delicious I'm not sure how much sesame oil is utilized in American Cooking but it's so Smoky and then it's just taken on the flavors of everything else in here especially that garlic what do you think of the broth I love it I love it too it's spicy and N bean and a lot of spices fragrance he's put fennel and Starnes and other herbs inside I was scared about

the heat the first bite was a little bit intense but as you keep eating it it's like the poison is also the remedy it's hot but then if you keep eating you don't feel the pain yeah so here we have pork belly the pork should cook longer than beef so the average Hot Pot session lasts how long at least 1 hour if you drink beer it will be last to 3 hour or more it's not just a meal in China it's more like a social activity when you eat H you don't play with phones you drink beers we talk we share the story about your life it's cute that's good right for you

it's okay I think it's should be fine w that is so good and nice thing the pork can absorb more soup than beef yeah I think you have a point there half of what we ate is just fat and the fat has so much flavor so we got fat on oil on oil let give me a rough knife so all this food has been amazing but for me it's a little bit on the normal side okay from here we're going to go to a hot pot place that has such a huge variety of meats including some stuff that's a bit unusual at least for us Americans I'm talking inerts different unusual organs blood be

honest everything that's on the table right now have you eaten it before yeah I eat this like every week and it's so good okay that's all I want is a testimonial so we have two parts of the beef tripe today this is the reticulum reticulum yeah no person on Earth noses except for Farm vets the reticulum is a small pouch located near the cow's heart before being sliced up it looks like this wow it's my first time touching it this looks like something that you finish polishing a car with it looks soft it's got bristles it it won't scratch anything everyone

knows cow stomachs have four compartments this is the second compartment of the cow stomach before food reaches the reticulum it must pass through the rin a large compartment that could hold more than 25 gallons here the food is soaked and softened making digestion easier then it moves to the reticulum and then this thing helps kick back some of the bigger pieces so the cow can continue chewing it even more that means this is probably a gaming piece of meat it probably is exposed to a lot of stomach acid and just a lot of delicious flavors I cannot wait

to put this in a hot pot and see how it tastes in we have a saying that is eat M only take 15 seconds 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh M that's so good it's so good it has an amazing texture it's so crunchy it's very thin the part that looks like a scouring pad that you would clean your counter with you can feel that the texture on there a pot yeah those little bumps but at the same time it's so thin and kind of crunchy it's got a nice crunch to it it's funny to True beyond that this broth is also a level up from our last broth this is

even more spicy even more numbing then we have this kind of stomach right here hold on I'm going to sneeze again no all right wow oh my God bless you it happened wow this is such a unique preparation it looks like the bristles of a broom these are slices of the omea which originally looked like this this is the third chamber of the stomach and you can see the texture is completely different look at all these scary wild ripply pieces inside of the stomach these layers act like a sponge squeezing out any excess water from the food leaving only the good

stuff to enter the fourth and final compartment the abomasum which is similar to our human stomachs here all the energy and nutrients are extracted from the food this is why we can't be vegan we don't have whatever this is going on inside of us cows they're vegan and somehow their body through the use of all these stomach Chambers is able to capture enough nutrients but humans we need to eat the cow sorry cow we can TOS the whole plate into that oh okay sure let's do it this needs some time to cook and this should be too oh that's the blood it's

interesting cuz they've poured blood into a bowl it's kind of coagulated they've cut it into cubes yeah they put something made them taste like a very tender tofu while these are cooking let's talk about the other two foods that are remaining right here we have we have Goose intestines they've been cleaned very thoroughly and it looks like they've been cut down one side and spread open so they almost look like fat thick noodles oh come on you can have some more that's at least five okay okay oh two is enough dude thank you for downgrading so quickly the

texture is tremendous he kind of crunchy and tender as a same time yeah cuz it's like flexible but then when you bite into it crunch not as crunchy as the initial cow stomach that we had but man that is such a unique experience I love it I think it's unfortunate that in the USA we don't really appreciate strange or unusual textures maybe our most unusual texture would be like a medium rare steak that's to basic when you come to a place like China you come to appreciate organs and you stop seeing them as these strange body parts and you start to see them

as just a different mouth feel that said I think everything that's in here is done the tripe has cooked through it looks insane it looks like an inoi mushroom mushroom M wow one more this time it's very different it's not crunchy it's more spongy it's absorbing the broth so all the flavor all the oil it's getting absorbed into the stomach every time you take a bite it's like a a spongy texture that releases all this flavor so he uses the Civ he pulls out the blood cakes and they are so tender you have to be really gentle it's like silky tofu yeah it's

very silky right I like eating animal parts that remind me of vegetarian food because yes I could just eat silky tofu boring yeah boring who cares this is the life force of a duck but it's delicate it's soft it breaks apart or almost liquefies in your mouth this is so good from here we have one food remaining I saw this food earlier but I had no idea what it was take a look guys in all my travels I have never seen any organ that looks like this it looks insane it feels gelatinous and floppy it's cows A a o r t a a I just feel like people and kids and

adults in China have a better grasp on Anatomy no American knows this I don't know what is AA either I just love to eat it well you really don't know what it is I think it's the organ to plump the blood to other organs I think it plumps the blood yes yeah but let me see the aorta it is the body's largest artery and it's responsible for carrying oxygen rich blood from the heart to the rest of the body that's an important job and that's really and that's really delicious maybe wait 2 or 3 minutes all right so while that's boiling I have some questions for

you you are a content Creator why did you get started ooh because I I like to eat I like to search some local restaurant then I think why should I spend my money on this for making money so I start recording my own Vlog and so which platform for you is your main platform we and Bey these names may sound alien because China is a different planet when it comes to social media here you won't find Facebook YouTube X or even Myspace in their place China has developed its own versions of these websites we have t is Tik Tok yeah is the original Tik Tok and kind

of similar to Instagram we have we kind of like Twitter X and we have bey bey kind of like YouTube so in your videos what is your special value I think sometimes I'm funny sometimes me too occasionally but it happens here and there so I'm going to pull up some of this aorta it looks completely different after boo it will become smaller yeah it really did shrink quite a bit and the texture changed too it's cuz they have this diamond cut pattern H I like it it's different than I expected I expected it to be more hard like a trachea or like the throat or

something but it's pretty soft it's kind of slippery and loose as you're biting it it's kind of shooting around my mouth and a bit mushy in the way that a boiled mushroom would be you said all the thing I want to say oh I'll let you talk next time first from here we are going to go to the hottest hot pot that exists in this country I've been told this actually makes folks in China sick in that H restaurant got a dish that named in Chinese means arle and the time means disable Aro disable Robert thank you for joining us thank you SNY for having me joining

me for the final meal Robert a fellow American and food travel YouTuber who's called China home for 12 years here we have a food that looks innocent but the truth is this is a violent form of protein that could rip apart your insides it's so violent that you have to sign a waiver before you can even eat this now here's the problem the waiver is all in Mandarin can you translate this for me oh my God this dish is break your balls made by pork lutus roots and Shan Shan chili shanan chili is the most spicy chili in Asia it spies is up to 700,000 de can I go

home now this is the first time for you right yeah it's my first time how do you feel I feel confident to rang home yeah so is this saying that we cannot sue them we cannot uh destroy their toilets oh my God I don't know just D it eat it okay yeah why I mean it's just a contract with a Chinese company R in Chinese fortunately I did not sign to give away my YouTube channel the contract simply says the restaurant takes no responsibility for my life or lack thereof after I've eaten this meatball so I was asking the workers here all around two of the workers

have tried these out of all the workers here and there's a lot of workers they're all scared I am told that even some Chinese folks have come here they've eaten this and they got sick but we are not afraid cuz we are brave yeah you know what I got to call you out I feel like you're cheating I saw you earlier you're sneaking rice meanwhile do you know what I coated my stomach with two other portions of Hot Pot this is my third Hot Pot Pot today so listen nobody rush into it we're going to do it together here's the big question do we do half or do we all

let's do all wow let's just go give it a little bit of a dip cuz we're not Savages over here this is perhaps the spiciest meat you will find in all of China give it a shot shot uh-oh that's should to kill my ass it's got to be like half chilies there's so many chilies that it's bitter woo dude your face is swelling my tear is coming out don't touch your eyes actually that's not that spicy um it's building up okay like it's spicy it is building up a little bit I'm going to hicc up I'm going to hicc up except the cups this guy over here he got hiccups he's

saying it's not that spicy that's dumb spicy dude it's not even yummy it's so many chilies it must be like 20% pork 80% chilies I feel like someone heated up a piece of rebar until it was red and glowing hot and they shoved it down my throat they brought milk Okay I accept oh yogurt beverage here's why I underestimated this I think the general food here is not that spicy but this isn't food this is a gimmick like that's the one chip challenge like I've never done the one chip one chip challenge can't compare to this what this is way worse the yogurt

helps for like 10 seconds and then the pain comes back oh no did Fire come out yeah it's burning in my mouth I don't want this anymore we should have taken a little bite why do we eat the whole one cuz we are chili bro we're chili Bros yeah we're are chili bro we're chili Bros we chil BR pound it up we're in a lot of pain right now but at the end of an episode i' like to touch on a serious topic Robert you have an interesting life you've been in China for 12 years I feel like Americans have mixed ideas about what China is like so what is it like as an

like as an American living in China coming to China you think you think like you think that but like it's not like that when once you arrive it's like everyone's friendly go through costumes everyone's smiling at you there's pros and cons still living in China for sure the pros are good public transportation it's very convenient everything is like here you can use your Reach Out pay for everything it's really safe the cons are you know whatever the cons are what are the cons that are safe to see on camera Robert you can't see that you can't say that no

I'm Chinese I feel like even though there may be moments of tension between our countries when you come here and you're on the ground and you're shoulder-to-shoulder with the local people it's so friendly it's so fun it's like being anywhere else in the world where people just want to have a good time eat some good food and throw back a couple of beers to that gentleman I say cheers okay now um what's 911 in Chinese hungry for more fun food videos join me at more best ever Food review show a channel that's that's unfiltered unfiltered raw half the

quality and twice the fun can you walk away and come back oh look the server subscribe now and you probably won't regret it do you think this duck was alive like this morning I mean I don't think about it it will affect it my to my mood yeah no I know that's what I'm here for so in a lot of countries you know you live in Korea and you sneeze sorry and then no one says anything do people say anything after you sneeze in China or they just act like it never happened we just act like it never happen before it's becoming awkward yeah if I make like everybody

look at you then I will become oh sorry sorry sorry sorry but everybody don't look at me I it's okay just act I understand that it's important that I have a haet for my beautiful voluminous hair it could get all over the place but all things considered shouldn't he have a hair net for his legs wow that's shade you have to translate that you're translate that you're shading boom that is the end of the video today we went to a bunch of Hot Pot locations with my new friend D home do you have a good time yep I have a good time I want to say something first

of all this guy if you can see this video then you can't see his social media but if you can see his social media then you're not watching this video so people can't really follow you can they I think you can I got and on Chinese social media yeah but but if people are in China they're not watching this YouTube video y kind of few that's naughty M I don't know they're not supposed to do that I don't know I don't understand understand that good innocent next I bet you're wondering hey what happened after they ate those spicy meatballs well I'll tell you

what happened to me it was awful I had a stomach ache I vomited and then I had some other issues too which you could guess do I suggest trying that spicy meatball absolutely not it's not food it's poison don't put it in your body yeah same here last night was Nightmare Nightmare oh otherwise guys that is it for this video thank you so much for watching I'll see you next time peace