Grilling the Sichuan Way

This post was updated in August 2025 to include more photos and helpful info.

Shaokao (烧烤, shāokǎo), or Chinese barbeque, comes in many forms. The most famous is from the far west region of Xinjiang, where Uyghur Muslims have perfected cumin-dusted lamb skewers, but other areas of the country have taken Xinjiang BBQ and made it their own.

In Sichuan, there is certainly no shortage of Muslim street grillers with their meat-laden carts and crusty rounds of nang bread. But there is also a more localized style of chuan, or skewers, that features less lamb and more chicken parts and vegetables. That’s just a generalization, however, because if you walk into a modern shaokao joint in Chengdu, sometimes you’ll be ordering from a menu, but sometimes you’ll be greeted with case after refrigerated case of marinated animal and plant bits threaded onto skewers, waiting for you to choose them, place them on your tray, and deliver them to the BBQ masters, who will grill them up to order.

I prefer this interactive experience, where you get to see before you buy, because it opens up all kinds of possibilities you may not have explored on a menu. As in other popular forms of Sichuan dining—hot pot, dry pot, chuan chuan (a kind of hotpot where the ingredients are threaded onto skewers), bo bo ji (cold skewers served in a big bowl of chili-oil sauce)—the choices for shaokao are almost limitless: If you can thread it on a bamboo skewer, you can grill it!

Another thing to know about shaokao is that, like hot pot, it’s often a communal, late-night dining-and-drinking experience. Long after most restaurants have closed in the evening, hot pots are boiling and fires are grilling all over the food streets of Chengdu and Chongqing—especially post-pandemic, as nightlife has returned with a roar to China’s big cities.

Check out the scene at this late-night Chongqing shaokao place in summer 2025 to get a sense of the Chinese BBQ vibe. It’s super casual, but was also some of the best shaokao we’ve ever had.

Choosing a Shaokao Spice

The spice blend is key for shaokao; a superior spice blend makes for superior skewers. As mentioned, Xinjiang skewers usually feature a cumin-heavy spice that may or may not be chili-hot. Whereas in Sichuan and Chongqing, the BBQ tends to be spicy with chili and tingly with Sichuan pepper, and may or may not include cumin (usually not). But in general, one can say that in West and Southwest China the skewers will be highly flavorful and at least slightly spicy—and, in our opinion, they just cannot be beat.

So…in August 2025, The Mala Market introduced an entire new line of shaokao spices in the flavors you’ll find throughout western China. Made for us in small batches in Chongqing, the flavors and their main ingredients include:

• Fragrant Hot: chili, cumin, Sichuan pepper
• Tingly Hot: chili, Sichuan pepper (no cumin)
• Smoky Cumin: cumin, chili (less spicy, no Sichuan pepper)
• Shao Kao Collection: all three flavors

All of the flavors also include sesame seed, fennel, cao guo (black cardamom) and star anise as well as salt, sugar and msg.

You can make your own blend with similar ingredients, or you can also season shaokao as Chinese grillers often do by just sprinkling any or all of ground chilies, ground Sichuan pepper, ground cumin and salt directly on to the skewers while grilling.

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Choosing and Prepping Ingredients for Shaokao

Once you’ve decided on your shaokao spice, you need to decide how to apply it. You can simply sprinkle the spice over the skewers before and during cooking. Or you can marinate them first, for a double whammy of flavor, which is what I recommend for meat and other proteins. Mix some shaokao spice with neutral oil and possibly some soy sauce and sesame oil and marinate the skewers in it. Then hit them again during or after grilling.

Meat/Fish Chuan (Skewers)

My absolute favorite in the protein category is chicken skin. It is hard to beat a marinated, crispy, charred piece of fatty chicken skin. But I also love lamb and chicken wings and chicken hearts and gizzards and giant prawns. Fongchong’s favorite in the meat category is sausages that look a lot like hot dogs. No comment.

The key here—and really for all Chinese BBQ—is cutting the meat into quite small pieces, much smaller than you would for a Western kabob. This serves several purposes: smaller pieces of meat have a higher ratio of marinade and spice to surface and therefore more flavor; they cook much more quickly, which is a necessity on small Chinese braziers; and it means you can eat dozens of skewers at a sitting (and the average Chinese person does!).

Vegetable Chuan

The abundance of vegetables offered in Sichuan shaokao is to me one of its most brilliant aspects. Even non meat lovers can enjoy barbeque in Chengdu. From thinly sliced potatoes and lotus root and various kinds of tofu and mushrooms, to green chilies, green beans, eggplant, cauliflower and even corn (each giant kernel threaded onto the skewer in single file), the options go on and on. You can use the same marinade as the meat, or simply brush them generously with oil and dust them with the shaokao spice before, during and/or after grilling. Cooks in Sichuan often use a homemade scallion oil to brush the skewers while grilling, sprinkling the shaokao spice on, then flipping the skewer and repeating on the other side.

The key step here is to parboil the more dense vegetables before grilling, both to make them pliable enough to thread on the skewers (otherwise they will break) and to make the grilling faster. This is tricky though, because if you over-boil them, they will also break during threading. So you want just a partial cook, about half-way done.

The Grill

I am by no means a grill master, so I am counting on you to grill on the equipment  and in the manner that you usually do, remembering that the smaller ingredients may take less time. Your life will be much easier when grilling skewers if you have the type of grill with a raised grate so the ends of the skewers can protrude off the grill for easy access and turning. As you can see, we have a Weber grill, with a grate a couple inches below the grill edge, so the skewers must be turned, rather awkwardly, with tongs. (I’m seriously considering buying one of these Asian braziers though.)

Also, I do recommend that you use wooden skewers or thin metal ones, as the fat metal skewers will destroy the small meat and thinly cut vegetables. Remember to soak the bamboo skewers in water before using to reduce the burn.

Grill skewers over medium heat, flipping to sear both sides and seasoning as needed.

To learn more about the wonderful world of Chinese BBQ, check out blog posts from our friends Maggie Zhu at Omnivore’s Cookbook for a primer on Xinjiang lamb skewers made on a Chinese brazier and Georgia Freedman of Cooking South of the Clouds for Yunnan-style shaokao (which is quite similar to Sichuan’s) and some tips on converting a Weber grill to a makeshift shaokao grill.

For an even deeper dive into Sichuan’s regional shaokao styles, see our contributor Xueci Cheng’s guide to Sichuan Vegetarian Shaokao.