Jan 13, 20234 min read

Hotpot Delivery—Bukoga Shabu Shabu Takeout

Updated: Mar 26, 2023

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Chinese New Year is just next week! I can't believe how quick time is passing. Ever since my sister got married, my entire family does not get together to eat as often as before unless there is a holiday. And it's always quite laborious to cook for a group of 5.

So the other day, I got a take-out meal for 6 from Bukoga Shabu Shabu and had my sister and brother in-law over for a Sunday hotpot brunch.

Bukoga Hotpot Delivery—Great Value

I simply have to rave about how affordable Bukoga hotpot takeout is. All this food that can feed 6 people only costs NTD$1,520. That averages out to be around NTD$233 each. It fed my family of 5 quite amply and we are a family of monster eaters.

The meal contains 4 liters of broth, 2 in each flavor, 5 servings of meat that weighs 150 grams each, 1 serving of seafood, 1 box of hotpot ingredients, 4 rolls of tofu skin, and 6 servings of noodles. There's even a bottle of handmade Taiwanese barbecue sauce!

For the soup, of course I went for the Sichuan Mala broth (+NTD$80). For the other side of the pot, my dad chose the classic Kelp Dashi Broth. For the protein, we got 2 servings of pork shoulders, 2 servings of beef brisket slices, and 1 serving of blade steak slices. The seafood was a box of 8 shrimp and a pack of oysters.

Each meal set for 6 comes with 2 packs of udon noodles, which are my favorite, and 2 packs of instant ramen noodles, which are my sister's favorite. By the way, each pack of the udon noodles could really be counted as 2 servings. There was so much I had to split it with my brother in-law.

Bukoga Hotpot Delivery—Fresh and Sanitary

All the food is packaged in tightly sealed boxes or plastic bags to ensure that no contamination happens and everything is squeaky clean. The meat is immediately frozen and shipped after being sliced to guarantee its freshness.

They have an even wider variety of fresh seafood at their physical store that is sushi-grade, meaning that they are good enough to be eaten raw.

By the way, I'd recommend that you rinse the delivered seafood to thaw it out a bit before cooking. The frozen ice cubes around the seafood is usually very fishy. There's nothing wrong with the seafood itself though. It did not ruin the soup and the shrimp taste nice and sweet.

Bukoga Hotpot Delivery—Soup Base/Broth

Sichuan spicy hotpot is one of my favorite things in this world. The Sichuan Mala broth from Bukoga smells of hotpot bricks that my brother in-law brings back from Sichuan. Traditional Sichuan hotpot is made from beef tallow and therefore is solid in room temperature. They cut them into bricks that you can use as a soup base once you add hot water to them.

The Sichuan Mala broth is fragrant with all the aromatics but it does not taste particularly spicy or numbing. It perfectly suits the Taiwanese palette and our habit of actually "drinking" the broth. It has a more peppery taste from the cardamom. It was extremely flavorful before we even cooked anything in it. It also tastes so good with noodles!

The Kelp Dashi broth is pretty typical. I find the kelp dashi from some shabu shabu stores to be quite bland. But the Dashi broth from Bukoga was just the right amount of savory. It goes really well with seafood. That side of the pot was almost specifically selected for my dad since the rest of the family loves spicy food. Towards the end, it basically turned into a seafood soup.

Other soup base choices: milk and cheese (+ NTD$80), Mongolian Garlic (+ NTD$80), and Korean Kimchi (+ NTD$80)

Bukoga Hotpot Delivery—Hotpot Ingredients

Even though it's takeout, there is such a huge variety of selection. There are the popular imitation crab legs and fish dumplings.

The frozen tofu were so good after being cooked in the Sichuan Mala broth! They soak up all of the soup and become extremely flavorful.

The egg dumplings were pretty good as well. A lot of egg dumplings have this weird meat odor from the pork, but these tasted good.

There were also these pretty purple balls that I was so interested in. They became translucent once they were fully cooked. It's soft and chewy like mochi, and there's taro paste in the center that is a little bit sweet but goes so well with the spicy soup.

My brother in-law liked the lobster balls. There's a pack of cheesy sauce in the center with fish roe and lobster meat.

The Taiwanese barbecue sauce from Bukoga is unique, too. They stir fried and made the sauce on their own. It has a stronger taste of shrimp in comparison to regular Taiwanese barbecue. It's almost like a cross between Taiwanese barbecue sauce and XO sauce.

Bukoga Hotpot Delivery—Meat

The brisket slices and pork shoulder slices are both fattier cuts of meat. They bounce against your teeth just right. My dad swept a whole plate of brisket slices on his own in a flash. I wasn't even able to say goodbye to it.

Out of the three, I have to say that my favorite was the blade cut. The blade cut is the most low-fat cut, however, the beef slices were still extremely tender. I would submerge several slices in the broth at once and take it out in 5–10 seconds. The result is perfectly medium rare beef.