Category: How to Cook With Huajiao

Chongqing Chicken

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

Chongqing Chicken Like It’s Made in Chongqing

The Truth About Sichuan Food There vs. Here At last I’ve eaten Chongqing Chicken in Chongqing, and not only was it delicious, it was revelatory. This new recipe for the dish is based on the version I had there. It won’t be for everyone—a main ingredient is crispy fried chicken skin!—so I’m not replacing my previous recipe, which I created in 2015 based on memories of Chongqing chicken I had eaten in Chengdu, where it is known as laziji (chicken with chilies). I still like that version, but I want...

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

Hot-and-Sour Eggplant (Suanla Liangban Qiezi)

Chengdu Challenge #28: Eggplant, a Girl’s Best Friend What to send to school in your daughter’s lunchbox when she’s changing high schools as a sophomore and facing a lunchtime cafeteria where she knows no one and has no one to eat with? Her favorite vegetable, of course. The vegetable that makes her feel happy as she eats it no matter what is going on around her or how alone she feels. For Fongchong, that vegetable is eggplant. Now, I’d rather go over there and eat lunch with her in that...

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

Chongqing Chicken With Chilies (Laziji, 辣子鸡)

Chengdu Challenge #17: Chongqing Hot Chicken Below is a photo of the very first plate of Chongqing chicken—sometimes called 辣子鸡 (làzǐjī), or just chicken with chilies—I ever had. It was in Chengdu in 2007, in a famous, upscale restaurant. When the server put it down on the table, my husband and I broke into nervous laughter as we saw chunks of fried chicken sitting under an avalanche of dried chili peppers. If we were sweating now, we thought, wait until we try to polish this dish off so as not...

Shui Zhu Beef

Beef, Lamb & Game / Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible

Sichuan Water-Boiled Beef (Shuizhu Niurou, 水煮牛肉)

Chengdu Challenge #12: A Sichuan Outlaw 水煮 (shuǐzhǔ), or “water-boiled” dishes, may be Sichuan’s most notorious food—feared and loved in equal measure. Shuizhu’s reputation as a dish for the daring precedes it. But those brave enough to dip into its sea of málà—chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorn—to fish out a piece of buttery soft beef (or pork, or fish) are rewarded with the realization that shuizhu is not nearly as lethal as its reputation. It was a shocking sight the first time I saw Chef Qing Qing make 水煮牛肉 (shuǐzhǔ niúròu),...

Mapo tofu

Beef, Lamb & Game / Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

The Queen of Mapo Doufu Recipes (Mapo Tofu)

Chengdu Challenge #10: The Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine’s Mapo Doufu Recipe Best tofu dish in the world? Mapo doufu, without a doubt. You may be thinking that’s not saying much. But it is. In fact, forget that it features tofu. I’ll put this beefy, spicy, doubanjiang chili bean dish up against your favorite American beef-and-bean chili any day. I’ve been making mapo doufu—“pock-marked mother’s bean curd”—for years. It was one of the first dishes I learned from our brilliant chef Qing Qing back when I organized cooking classes for travelers...

Beef, Lamb & Game / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Hot and Spicy Beef (Xiangla Feiniu, 香辣肥牛)

Chengdu Challenge #6: A Spicy Beef Challenge in More Ways Than One “This is the only dish that’s spicy enough for girls’ night,” said my 15-year-old daughter, Fongchong, as she dove into Hot and Spicy Beef. She may be right. Though I’ll be working hard in this blog to disabuse readers of the notion that all Sichuan food is spicy, some dishes are indeed fiery. And out of all the spicy Sichuan dishes I regularly cook, this one is the spiciest. As a result, we generally save it for Wednesday...

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Huajiao / Poultry

Jiaomaji (椒麻鸡) Cold Chicken in Sichuan Pepper-Scallion Oil

Chengdu Challenge #2: The Magical Combo of Cold Chicken and Hot Peppers For the most part, chicken is chicken. But 椒麻鸡 (jiāomájī) sauce, now that’s a discovery! Jiaoma refers to Sichuan pepper, and the sauce is made by mixing the peppercorns together with a load of scallions and adding oil. Combine that with red-hot chili oil and Sichuan pepper oil and a little starter of cold chicken, jiaomaji, is the most exciting thing on the table. That’s what’s so brilliant about Sichuan cuisine. It has a million ways to make plain...

How to Cook With Huajiao

Sourcing Huajiao (Sichuan Pepper, Sichuan Peppercorn)

My Favorite Buzz: Sichuan Pepper “My mouth is sleeping,” Fongchong said as she worked her way through a plate of mala-flavored cabbage stir-fry. “But she opens and lets me eat.” And there you have it in a nutshell, the addictive power of Sichuan pepper. If there is one taste most closely associated with Sichuan cuisine, it is Sichuan pepper, the numbing spice. The bride of the chili pepper in many Sichuan dishes, it is the má—numbing—to chili pepper’s là—spicy hot—in the word málà, which is practically synonymous with Sichuan food. While...