Earthen Pot (沙锅 Shaguo)

The earthen pot is commonly used in China both as a cooking utensil and a table vessel. Various soups made in such a pot with vegetables and meatballs and/or soya bean curd are inexpensive, tasty and therefore highly popular.

The Chinese earthen pot is made of a special white pottery clay which, with its stable chemical property, is impregnable to acid, alkaline or salt. It is superior in several ways to cooking vessels of iron or aluminium. Food cooked or stored away in the clay casserole will not easily deteriorate in the heat of summer.

Clay pots of a smaller size are also used by the Chinese to boil medicinal herbs, as they do not add any extraneous substance to the resultant decoction.

Most of the earthen pots come from two sources Foshan area in Guangzhou and Yixing area in Jiangsu Province. The sandy clay in these places makes an ideal material for the pottery industry. "shiwan sanbao" produced at Shiwan in Foshan city, Guangdong Province, are sold to Hongkong, Macao and Southeast Asia. It is a cooker (bao) that can be used for triple (san) purposes to cook rice, to make gruel and to boil tea.

Being made of burnt clay, the earthen pot is easily breakable and must be handled with care. It must not be heated on the fire when it contains no liquid inside; otherwise, it will crack and become leaky. A new pot, before being used, should be soaked in cold water for three to four hours and then heated over a fire to bring the water to a boil two or three times; this will temper the clay and give it a higher degree of hardness.

The clay pot is a slow heat-conductor, and that is why it keeps the food warm for a long time on the table in winter. When used in cooking, however, it should be heated first by a slow fire before intense heat is applied. When it is removed from the fire, it should be placed on a mat or wooden board, not direct on something damp and cold, for sudden contact with a cold surface may cause the hot pot to crack.