As long as there's hot pot with mutton slices, winter won't be so hard to endure. Hot pot with mutton slices is a ritual for Beijingers to pay tribute to winter. Whenever the temperature in Beijing drops sharply, long johns become an essential weapon for conquering the world every day. When you walk on the road and the wind stings your face and makes you walk clumsily, every pore of mine starts longing for hot pot with mutton slices.

The best place for hot pot with mutton slices is in the southern part of the city. Taxi drivers are always reluctant to drive into the alleys, so you have to get off at the entrance of the alley. Wrapping yourself up tightly in the alley where the cold wind is blowing around, you have to walk for five to ten minutes. Even if you are accompanied by a group of friends, it's dead silent at this moment. It's just too, too cold! But no one would ever back out, because this coldness is the prelude to having hot pot with mutton slices. Only after experiencing such a biting cold can you have that eager and impatient look in your eyes when you see the glass of the hot pot restaurant covered with steam and the two thick and heavy army-green cotton curtains.

The hot pot restaurants in the alleys of the southern part of the city are usually quite small, with less than ten tables in each shop. So you have to be time-conscious, or else you'll have to wait. In this kind of temperature and with so many clothes on, whether you stand inside the house filled with the aroma of hot pot with mutton slices or outside in the biting wind, it's not a particularly comfortable experience.

Once you sit down, the waiter will quickly bring over the purple copper pot. There aren't many options on the menu, but each one is the cream of the crop. If there are only two people, one plate each of hand-cut mutton, hand-cut mutton tendon, and fresh lamb tripe, along with a plate of Chinese cabbage, a plate of frozen tofu, and a plate of sweet garlic will be enough.

In more particular restaurants, there are more varieties. Hand-cut mutton from the upper part of the leg, fatty parts like the "big three-way" and mutton tail fat are rather fatty, and it's enough to choose one or two of them. Hand-cut "cucumber strips", mutton tendon meat, and the "small three-way" are leaner, and you can order several plates according to the number of people. In the end, you still can't do without frozen tofu, Chinese cabbage, and sweet garlic. If you eat a lot, you can also order a plate of sesame paste-flavored baked buns. These are the rules and can't be broken casually.

The copper pot is already filled with boiling water, so you can start cooking the mutton slices as soon as it's on the table. Put the fatty ones in first. In less than five seconds, a layer of oil will float on the boiling water, and the steam will rise with a "puffing" sound, making your smiling face, which is already watering at the mouth, turn red. You usually can't wait and will lift the mutton slices up as soon as they change color, roll them in the sesame paste handed down in the boss's family, and then take a big bite with your mouth wide open.

Every family's sesame paste is different, and it used to be the lifeblood for starting a business. Some are pure sesame paste mixed with salt-free chives and Wangzhihe fermented bean curd (also known as "furu"), diluted with water. Some are sesame paste mixed with a bit of peanut butter to enhance the flavor, along with chives and fermented bean curd. Still others will add a bit of fragrant vinegar on this basis. It's said that this is the secret weapon of the last batch of master chefs in Nanshun Restaurant, which can relieve greasiness. If we look back at it from the perspective of today's flavor molecule combination theory, we have to give a thumbs up to those master chefs in the past. They were really amazing!

Eating the fatty parts first and then the lean ones is an old Beijing habit. After all, it's just plain water with scallions. Without some oil on the water, the mutton won't taste fragrant. Put the mutton tail fat and the "big three-way" into the pot first to enjoy the oily fragrance. Then put in the "small three-way" and the part near the rump to enjoy the tenderness. The tendon meat and the "cucumber strips" are for the crispness. Enjoying the three textures of crispness, tenderness, and fragrance in turn, and peeling a sweet garlic every couple of bites to relieve greasiness. In fact, two or three adults can't eat too much. Three or four solid plates of hand-cut mutton are basically enough to make you feel full. Looking back at the copper pot after eating, there won't be much blood foam. There's just a shiny layer of mutton fat shining in the steam. Finally, eat some Chinese cabbage and frozen tofu to balance the ratio of vegetables to grease in your stomach and also to warm your stomach. Then take a bite of the freshly baked, salty, fragrant, and crispy sesame paste-flavored baked bun, pat your belly, and you won't be afraid of the biting cold outside the thick cotton curtain anymore.

Putting aside the noisy market hype nowadays, isn't the original appearance of hot pot with mutton slices that on a freezing cold day, two buddies would buy a bottle of beer, set up a pot in a hot pot with mutton slices restaurant, spend a little money to have some meat, simply and roughly cook some fresh mutton slices, use sesame paste to enhance the flavor, and satisfy their most primitive appetite as human beings? Simple, straightforward, and comfortable. That's also the character of Beijingers. In hot pot with mutton slices, we quietly take off our tiredness and use the most primitive way to regain the feeling of being alive and healthy.