Tried the self-heating hot pots from HDL (purchased from NTUC). This one was the tomato base hot pot which is completely vegetarian. It comes with flat rice noodles, dehydrated potato slices, black fungus, mushroom and capsicum. Setting it up is fairly simple although we took a while to figure it out for fear of pouring the wrong thing in the containers 😂 basically you just have to pour the ingredients in the white bowl on top, fill the bowl with water to the indicated line (I would recommend filling it less than that if you don’t like diluted soup), lift the bowl up and put the heat pack below and fill with water to cover the heat pack. Cover with the lid and stand back to watch the magic happen.

It takes about 15 minutes for this to cook, but it makes a good meal for one! You might have to add on some meat or protein sources, as well as some green veggies, but other than that, the tomato soup is indeed similar to what you can get at the restaurant itself (just a bit too diluted, will add less water next time). Really enjoyed the noodles, even more than regular rice vermicelli or glass noodles! But don’t let them cook too long as they become fragile and hard to pick up with chopsticks without breaking the strands. Was pleasantly surprised that the potatoes cooked through and became super tender, the slices were very thin so that’s probably why though! While the hotpot is a little pricey (close to $10), it’s certainly more convenient and a viable choice for when you want hotpot at home for one!