Not too long ago, we bought a bottle of Hotpot Kitchen Mala Sauce 麻辣香锅麻辣酱料 (200g) *Halal Certified* on Shopee Malaysia. We’ve seen their restaurants at shopping malls, though we’ve never tried their food because as far as we know, none of their restaurants are JAKIM halal certified.

All we could do then was just walk past their outlets and whenever we get tempted, we’d make our own hotpot at home.

Then one day we came across their Shopee listing and you can imagine how excited we got when we found out their mala sauce is halal certified!

Naturally, we had to buy it.

We’ve used their Mala Sauce 麻辣香锅麻辣酱料 to make mala xiang guo a couple of times and we love it! The sauce makes it so convenient to make mala xiang guo, especially when we want to eat something yummy in a snap! But don’t take our words at 100% because we did add other condiments to the sauce. We didn’t really make the mala xiang guo just by using their sauce.

So the question now is, could you make mala xiang guo just by using their sauce?

You could. Though we can’t tell for certain how it’d turn out. Do try and let us know.

Then why did we add other condiments to the sauce?

We’ve always added other condiments to store-bought sauces and pastes. It’s just how we roll.

Speaking of mala xiang guo, we haven’t made in a while. With the kind of weather we’ve been having here in Johor Bahru, we should make it again soon.

Update 26 Nov 2021: Hotpot Kitchen contacted us and said the Mala Mala restaurants located at IOI City Mall and Mid Valley Megamall are their sister restaurants. Guess we have another place to go to when we make our next trip to KL!