Category: How to Cook With Huajiao

Sichuan pepper ice cream

Dessert / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Sesame

Sichuan Pepper Ice Cream with Brown Sugar Sesame Swirl (Optional)

Flower Pepper Ice Cream Believe me when I tell you that Sichuan pepper and ice cream are a case of opposites attract. I had heard tell of this ice cream flavor for a while, but was skeptical myself: “What?” I thought. The spice that brings the citrusy, numbing punch to mapo tofu and hot pot and numerous other fiery Sichuan dishes being used as the main flavor of a dessert? But then I finally made this ice cream, and—wowza—it was a revelation. We think of Sichuan pepper, or huajiao, as...

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Sichuan Hot and Sour Shredded Potato (Suanla Tudousi, 酸辣土豆丝)

Weeknight Shredded Potato There comes a time in every potato’s life when it graduates out of the larder to emerge peeled, quartered, cubed, sliced, hasselbacked, mashed, puréed, you name it. In China, you’ll also find Sichuan Hot and Sour Shredded Potato (酸辣土豆丝, suānlà tǔdòusī), a stir-fry mainstay in restaurants and homes. Though shredding is a common Chinese potato treatment, it remains a niche cut in the U.S., favored only for its breakfast potential. Yes, suanla tudousi’s closest living ‘Murican relative is the griddle-fried shredded potato hash brown at your favorite...

Little Crispy Pork (Xiao Su Rou)

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Huajiao / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Pepper-Studded Little Crispy Pork (Xiaosurou, 小酥肉)

Pork Meets Dipping Chilies~~ This dish called xiaosurou, or little crispy pork, is deep-fried fatty pork studded with plenty of numbing Sichuan pepper. It is a starter or a snack—rich,  numbing and spicy—and you will not want to eat it as a meal. Well, you may actually want to, but you probably shouldn’t. The last two times I’ve had hotpot in Chengdu—both times with locals who were in the food biz—they both ordered xiaosurou as a starter for eating while the pot is heating up. That’s smart, because it can...

Sunning the la rou pork belly

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Huajiao / Non-Spicy / Pork / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Wind-Cured Pork Belly (Larou, 腊肉), Part 1

A Spring Festival Staple Some of us (namely me, but maybe you) have been planning on making Sichuan-style cured pork belly every winter for years but have been slightly daunted by the process. Even if you haven’t always had this wind-cured pork belly in your sights you will now, after reading this recipe and realizing it’s not as hard as it looks, and that after the moderate effort of curing you will have a long-lasting stash of smoky, savory goodness at the ready. The key is mainly timing. Look for a...

Sichuan mala hot pot with beef tallow

Beef, Lamb & Game / Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Soups & Stews / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Mala Hotpot, From Scratch (Mala Huoguo with Tallow Broth)

Hotpot Party at Your House Although this recipe for mala hotpot first published in early 2018 is the most popular recipe on our entire blog, we have revised and updated it as of November 2020. Why? Well, when I first developed it, there weren’t many recipes for Sichuan hotpot online in English—and none at all, that I could find, that included beef fat (tallow), a style of hotpot broth widely loved in Chongqing and Chengdu. There probably were Chinese-language online videos and recipes for it, but they were less accessible...

Clams in a Soy Sauce and Sichuan Pepper Oil Broth

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Clams in Soy Sauce and Sichuan Pepper Oil Broth

Chengdu Clams Fongchong and I have had a variation on this modern Sichuan clam dish twice in Chengdu. I can’t remember exactly what they were called, but they both had clams and a crunchy green veg counterpoint (once cucumber and once celtuce), and a simple but distinctly flavored sauce in which the high notes were soy sauce and green Sichuan pepper oil. Both times we ordered it from the picture menu and were slightly surprised when it arrived. The first time, in summer 2018, it surprised us by being a...

Crunchy Lotus Root Salad

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

No Sweet Sour: Crunchy Lotus Root Salad (Liangban Cui Ou, 凉拌脆藕)

From Yunnan, With Love I am thrilled to welcome Michelle Zhao of No Sweet Sour as a new contributor to this blog. Michelle grew up in Kunming, Yunnan, and now lives in Bergen, Norway, so she is intimately familiar with one of China’s most diverse and delicious cuisines as well as with the challenges of trying to prepare regional Chinese food outside China. I’ve been following her on Instagram for some time, where every photo makes me wish I was eating what she’s eating. I think you’ll feel the same,...

suan la fen

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Chongqing Suanlafen (酸辣粉) Sour and Spicy Sweet Potato Noodles

Lameizi’s Noodles: A Spicy Girl Graduates Suanlafen, or sour and spicy soup with sweet potato noodles, always makes me think of Fongchong. We share a belief that spicy and sour, in that order, are the two best tastes, and nothing embodies those tastes better than suanlafen. Not only is it my daughter’s go-to soup in Sichuan restaurants, but one particular memory of her having it in her homeland always makes me smile, reminding me that my spicy girl (lameizi, as they’re known in Sichuan) knows her own mind and will always...

Crispy Sichuan-Pepper Pulled Pork by The Mala Market

How to Cook With Huajiao / Non-Spicy / Pork / Sichuan Pantry Compatible

Sichuanish BBQ: Crispy Sichuan-Pepper Pulled Pork

Sichuan BBQ Pork Candy Here’s the extent of this Sichuan-ish BBQ recipe for crispy Sichuan-pepper pulled pork: Get a pork shoulder with a nice fat cap; score the fat in a diamond shape; rub the whole thing generously with kosher salt, sugar and freshly ground Sichuan pepper; put it in the oven at very low heat, and leave it there. Take it out many hours later, pull it apart with some forks, and marvel at its perfect mix of moist, tender meat and crispy, spicy fat. Really, there’s not much...

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Restaurants, Travel & Interviews / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Roasted Chili Eggplant (Liangban Qiezi, 凉拌茄子) from Chengdu’s Ying Garden

Great Sichuan Restaurant Recipes: Green Food vs. Red Food When people think of Sichuan food, they think of red. The three ingredients most identified with the cuisine—red chilies, red Sichuan peppercorns and red chili bean paste—present a united front of red in the bowl or plate when they are all in use. But what the West tends to forget is that Sichuan has some magnificent green food. Not just green leafy vegetables, which make up the majority of any full meal, but green chilies, green Sichuan pepper, green onions and...

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Laziji-Style Chongqing Lobster (Longxia, 龙虾)

A Mala Fish Fry We all know what it’s like to get inspired by a dish in a restaurant and feel you have to figure out its secrets for yourself so you can make it anytime the craving hits. My latest such obsession is Chongqing Lobster—though in this case I didn’t even eat it, but merely read about it in a review of New York’s new DaDong restaurant. But when I read this idea—Chongqing chicken where the chicken is replaced by lobster—I couldn’t get it out of my mind. How...

Shui zhu yu (water-boiled fish) from The Mala Market

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Soups & Stews / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Water-Boiled Fish With Tofu (Shuizhuyu, 水煮鱼)

Swimming Fire Fish Shuizhuyu, translated literally as water-boiled fish, may be the most misleadingly named dish ever. Far from swimming in a sea of water, the fish fillets float in a luxurious bath of mala spicy broth. Restaurateurs in the U.S. often give it a more fitting translation, the most creative I’ve seen being “swimming fire fish.” And yet, as I previously discussed when I published a recipe for shuizhu beef, shuizhu dishes are not as explosive as they appear at first sight. Yes, the main ingredient shares space with...