Nowadays, you may come across portable steamboat offerings from parked vans like the one below:
Compared to having steamboat at a restaurant which is more expensive, standing by the roadside, picking your favourite items- fishballs, meatballs, sausages, GBPs (gross body parts), beancurd, vegetables, cuttlefish, meat in all types of styles, fish, shellfish, etc over delicious sauces- beancurd, satay or chili sauce.
Night markets often have them now. All you do is to take the item you want that is usually stuck on a stick- then you just put it into the hot boiling water like what you see on the top at the diagram. After the item is cooked, you can have your choice of different sauces to put on your item.
This particular portable van offers even grilled and BBQ meat- the owner was preparing the items and seasoning them while waiting for customers. The portable steamboat offers the option of a light dinner- but do take note though, even though the steamboat food is relatively low in calories, the sauces are not- like the satay sauce. And the few places where I’ve eaten this, the MSG level is a bit high- so you may get thirsty after that.
Usually a few customers who want a quick dinner would just stand around the van and have a few sticks, then dash off to somewhere. Once at a night market, a tourist was trying out the steamboat- my guess is that he is on a high protein diet because he picked mostly food like liver and clams (kerang). But he really loved the satay sauce.
