BEIJING (SCMP): A Sichuan hotpot restaurant has been punished by the local government for creating “saliva oil” by recycling the leftover chilli oil soups of diners and mixing the brew with new oil to serve the next customers.
The Nanchong Market Regulation Administration, in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, reported on December 2 that it busted a hotpot restaurant that recycled leftover “old oil” and added it into its hotpot soup base.
The government conducted an investigation on the restaurant after receiving a tip-off from a diner.
They seized 11.54 kilos of recycled beef tallow, a chief ingredient of Sichuan and Chongqing spicy hotpot, in the restaurant’s kitchen.
They also examined four pots of ready-made soups that contained beef tallow that looked different from packaged beef tallow they bought from legitimate companies.
The restaurant’s owner, surnamed Chen, admitted that they had been extracting chilli oil from diners’ leftover soup base since September, and mixing it up with new oil, to “improve the soup’s flavour” and “mend its dismal business”.
The administration confiscated all the recycled oil, and transferred the case to the local police department for further investigation.
China’s Food Safety Law, which first came into effect in 2009, bans the reuse of leftover food ingredients.
The law, considered as the country’s harshest food safety regulations to date, was much expected after mainland reporters revealed some vendors’ illicit practice of recycling “gutter oil” obtained from restaurant garbage disposals and selling it back to restaurants.
The term “gutter oil” is also widely known in Taiwan, after the first documented case of a company manufacturing cooking oil using garbage obtained from pig farmers was revealed in 1985.
According to China’s Criminal Law, people who mix harmful raw materials into food for sale face a fine and up to five years’ imprisonment.
The Nanchong Market Regulation Administration also recently seized another hotpot restaurant that had been using “saliva oil” in its soup base since October 2023.
However, on mainland social media, some people from Sichuan and Chongqing, the two southwestern Chinese provinces known for spicy hotpot, said it was a traditional practice for hotpot restaurants to mix old and new oil and it did spice up the flavour.
“It is an open secret among local diners, yet we still go to hotpot restaurants because the hotpot without old oil is not delicious,” said one online observer from Chongqing.
“The reason why the packaged hotpot soup base is not as delicious as that in the restaurants is the recycled oil,” another person from Sichuan said.
A third said she could accept recycling old oil but the oil must be “filtered and heated at a high temperature”.
The traditional practice of making “saliva oil” requires the leftover soup base to be heated and filtered, before being heated again to more than 115 degrees Celsius.
Another person expressed concern over food safety: “The risk of catching infectious disease from recycled food material is unbearable.” - South China Morning Post
