Sourcing Huajiao (Sichuan Pepper, Sichuan Peppercorn)
Published Jun 03, 2014, Updated May 04, 2024
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 many cuisines make use of the chili pepper, no other cuisine features Sichuan peppercorn—which the Sichuanese call huajiao, or flower pepper, because of its flowery shape when dried—so abundantly and unabashedly.
My daughter Fongchong came to us straight from Guangzhou (Canton) at age 11, and we assumed that she would shun Sichuan pepper. However, I knew she liked spicy food, so after a couple of months I made that mala cabbage, stir-fried with dried chili peppers and Sichuan peppers. In this case, I used whole Sichuan peppercorns, as it was merely meant to flavor the oil. But I used too much and it was too numbing, even for me. But not for Fongchong. At some point in her Cantonese life she had acquired a taste for mala, and while Sichuan pepper’s definitely an acquired taste, it quickly turns to an addictive one.
However, it’s important to learn how to eat huajiao. You don’t put a whole Sichuan peppercorn in your mouth and bite down—unless you’re looking for some anesthesia. It will indeed numb your tongue and mouth, and while that is not totally unpleasant, it is weird. Like the hot sensation of chili pepper, the numbing of Sichuan pepper is detected not by the sensory nerves for taste but by those for touch. Very recent research shows that those Sichuan pepper vibrations are actually about 50 hertz strong, which explains the tingling. So if you see a whole Sichuan peppercorn in a dish, avoid chomping on it. It’s there for flavor only, and a slight buzz. The more appealing way to eat it is ground into tiny chunks or powder.
If you have had Sichuan food in America during the past few years made the Sichuan way (vs. the Canto way), you probably encountered huajiao. But this wasn’t always the case in the U.S., where Sichuan pepper was suspiciously absent from “Szechwan” food for most of its history here. The reason is fairly obvious, since almost all of America’s Chinese restaurants were historically run by immigrants from Canton and other southern China provinces. Their cuisines don’t even make use of chilies, much less Sichuan pepper. Those tastes were just too overwhelmingly bold for their liking, so when they made Sichuan dishes they cut down on the chilies and jettisoned the Sichuan pepper altogether, robbing the food of its kick and, therefore, its true identity.
Another reason “Szechwan” food in America was long missing its mala mojo was that the USDA banned the Sichuan peppercorn from importation for 37 years. Now that the ban has been lifted, Sichuan pepper has come in with a roar befitting its roar of a taste. Two recent Chinese-food cult figures, Peter Chang and Danny Bowien, have ridden it to fame, and even your local Sichuan restaurant is probably going heavier on the ma nowadays.
Sourcing Sichuan Peppercorn
Sichuan pepper is not truly a pepper but the seed pod of a shrubby tree in the citrus family. There are dozens if not hundreds of edible Sichuan pepper species and varieties grown in China as well as in Japan and some other Asian countries. It is sometimes called prickly ash, a species of which also grows in the U.S. As the little berries dry, they open and release their seeds, which are not eaten.
In Sichuan, you find huajiao in an array of colors, from green to brownish red to bright red, and you also see it freshly picked during some times of the year. The Chengdunese make liberal use of the fresh-on-the-vine green Sichuan pepper, or tengjiao, as an ingredient and garnish. Green Sichuan pepper is sometimes also called rattan pepper in English.
Most Sichuan pepper has a strong citrus fragrance and flavor ranging from lemon and orange to grapefruit and pomelo. Everyone seems to have a different opinion about whether the red or green is more strong and numbing. I feel the green is more intense, but it also just has a different flavor, more fresh and vegetal, while the red tends to be more warm and woodsy.
The most famous red huajiao has historically been grown in Hanyuan County, Sichuan, and in the summer of 2017, after a dozen trips to Sichuan in as many years, I finally visited Hanyuan and the village of Qingxi, the historic center of Sichuan pepper production. I was there to do research for importing spices and also to write about the history of Sichuan pepper in the U.S. (for Roads & Kingdoms, Slate, and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown).
The tortured path of Sichuan pepper from farm to American table is a fascinating story, and I hope you’ll read about it in detail in one of those publications, but long story short, Sichuan pepper was banned in the U.S. from 1968 to 2005 for fear it could spread citrus canker. The ban was lifted in 2005 with the caveat that all Sichuan pepper had to be heated to 140° for 10 minutes or more to kill any possible canker bacteria—a heating process thought to diminish the quality. What I discovered in my research was that sometime in the recent past the USDA had quietly lifted the requirement for heat treatment, stating that Sichuan pepper “poses negligible risk.” As I wrote in that article:
Sichuan pepper was banned outright for 37 years, then forced to endure unnecessary heat treatment for a dozen more—making it difficult for kung pao chicken, mapo doufu, and other Sichuan classics to wield their full numbing power for nearly 50 years in the U.S. And this whole time, there was “negligible risk”?
I also discovered, however, that none of the big processors and suppliers I talked to in Sichuan knew about the change and were still heat-treating all Sichuan pepper for the U.S. market. They didn’t believe the law had changed, but just this past January I finally convinced our supplier not to heat treat our latest shipment.
The Sichuan peppercorns found in Asian markets in the U.S. [in 2014] are usually lowest quality and quite inexpensive, full of brittle black seeds and stray twigs. They are also fairly old, not having a big turnover, and have often lost whatever aroma, flavor and numbing quality they ever had. I would therefore recommend buying Sichuan pepper from a spice shop or dedicated seller. You truly do get what you pay for.
And of course I would recommend buying it from The Mala Market. We source two species of red Sichuan pepper and one of green Sichuan pepper. The Big Red Pao (dahongpao) species is grown in Gansu province, as much quality huajiao is nowadays. As the name, which literally translates as big red robe, so wonderfully implies, it is large, bright red and delivers a big, earthy, citrus pow. The Hanyuan red peppercorn is smaller and darker red and is more lemony tart. Green huajiao is generally grown in warmer climates. Ours comes from the famed growing area of Jinyang County, in southern Sichuan near the Yunnan border.
All three species are from the most recently harvested crop, and have the intense fragrance, flavor, and numbing sensation Sichuan pepper is meant to have. And as a premium product, they have been carefully hand-sorted to have few twigs and seeds.
Cooking With Sichuan’s Favorite Spice
There are no hard and fast rules about which Sichuan pepper to use in which dish. It’s really a matter of preference. Green huajiao is very often used in fish dishes such as fish hotpot or fish with pickled vegetables (suancaiyu) or fish in green pepper sauce as well as with rabbit. Chongqing features the green in its famous noodle dishes. The more woodsy red huajiao goes better with heavier tastes like pork and dishes with chili bean paste (doubanjiang).
Sichuan peppercorns should be heated before eaten or ground. Use whole peppercorns as called for in recipes, usually to flavor the cooking oil. In some recipes it’s chopped up roughly with other ingredients as an ingredient or garnish. But mostly, you’ll use it ground into a powder. First, you lightly toast the peppercorns in a dry skillet until very fragrant. Then cool and grind in a spice or coffee grinder. I usually sift the powder, since some bits of the husk don’t break down well. Like any ground spice, it will lose its punch after a few months, so don’t store too long. Store extra Sichuan peppercorns in the freezer.
Shop The Mala Market
Da Hong Pao Sichuan Pepper (Hua Jiao)Buy on Mala Market
Sichuan Flower Pepper (Special-Grade Da Hong Pao Sichuan Pepper)Buy on Mala Market
Sichuan Tribute Pepper (Hanyuan Sichuan Pepper, Qingxi Gong Jiao)Buy on Mala Market
Green Sichuan Pepper (Qing Hua Jiao)Buy on Mala Market
Sichuan Pepper Grinder (Da Hong Pao Hua Jiao)Buy on Mala Market
Sichuan Pepper Sampler (Hua Jiao)Buy on Mala Market
Hello,
I had a wonderful meal at a Chinese restaurant in Liverpool (UK), with the most aromatic and refreshing taste of Sichuanese peppercorns. So aromatic and almost citrussy that for a moment I wondered what the spice was. It was fantastic! So I asked if I could buy some. Instead, they kindly gifted me a small pot with a paste that clearly contained peppercorns, but also chillies and some kind of fat. Have you come across this? What is it?
Thanks,
Ana
Hi Ana, I’m not sure what that delicious-sounding paste is. Jiao ma paste is made by crushing Sichuan peppercorns with scallions and oil. This sounds like a similar paste made with chilies, perhaps their own recipe for a mala paste. Have you cooked with it? Perhaps they used green Sichuan pepper, which has an even more citrusy/piney taste than red. Yum!
Yes, quite possibly. I’ll definitely look out for the green peppercorns – thanks for the tip.
prickly oil is also very good to give more “má” to your dish
http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/1596921768P1362153587232.jpg
From my experience, store bought peppercorns are always disappointing, not very fragrant and numbing
If you want to grow them, these are the species to look for:
Sichuan pepper: Zanthoxylum bungeanum Maxim.
Japanese green pepper: Zanthoxylum piperitum DC.
So true! While I don’t love store-bought chili oil, Sichuan-produced “prickly oil” (Sichuan pepper oil) is the bomb. I use that same brand all the time.
I also agree with you about store-bought Sichuan pepper. The exported product is often old by the time we buy it and (in the U.S.) always irradiated, which changes the flavor. You told me by email that your own Sichuan pepper tree is growing quite well in Belgium. Who would have thought? I’m going to try to grow one in Nashville now that I know that. Please link to a picture of your tree here so others can see it and be jealous. Thanks!
Where can you order fresh green on the vine peppercorns? I have not been able to find jt
Hi Chris,
They are abundant in Sichuan (where I bought the ones pictured), but I have never seen them in the U.S., even in large Chinese supermarkets. I doubt anyone is importing them (yet). 🙁
Farmer Kong Thao is growing them in California and has had them at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market for the past few weeks. They are AMAZING!
That’s awesome. I’m so jealous! Did he have FRESH ones there, or had he dried them? I don’t think they stay fresh very long. Were they green or red?
I went to a restaurant in California where they had some pao cai. In the pao cai I could see they used fresh ones still on vine.
Maybe smuggled illegally? 🙁
Interesting! With the explosion of interest in Sichuan food, more ingredients are becoming available every day. Perhaps you can get fresh Sichuan pepper in California now. Or, as you said, perhaps they have direct connections.
Taylor Holliday: “I also agree with you about store-bought Sichuan pepper. The exported product is often old by the time we buy it and (in the U.S.) always irradiated”
About that, I’ve read a comment from Fucshia Dunlop on egullet.org
fiore: “your tongue only numb for 5 minutes?! with some of the stuff I’ve tried it’s more like 15 or 20 (gradually diminishing)”
In his book Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A sweet-sour memoir of eating in China we can read this:
https://books.google.be/books?id=sQchAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=baby+tribute+pepper&source=bl&ots=YreHhBkzQY&sig=lNiNlbr3iGEDqcaafe5FfZxm7mM&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=kgotVfnYFoqu7Aa_3oGIDQ&ved=0CEkQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=baby%20tribute%20pepper&f=false
“In all my years of research for my Sichuanese cookery book, I never actually saw a Sichuan pepper tree. For that, you have to go to the high, dry slopes of various places in northern and western Sichuan. But of all the pepper grown in the province, none is better than that of the remote county of Hanyuan in the southwestern mountains, and within Hanyuan County itself, nothing compares to the sumptuously aromatic pepper of Qingxi Township. Even within Qingxi there are finer distinctions for aficionados: if you want to reach the very pinnacle of peppery perfection, you must accept nothing less than pepper harvested from the trees of niu shi po, the Ox Market Slopes, at the village of Jianli just outside Qingxi itself. Once, this pepper was sent in tribute to the imperial court. ‘Qingxi Tribute Pepper’, they still call it here.
‘This area produces about ten tonnes of pepper a year,’ said our guide, as we surveyed the prickly trees and the snow-blurred terraces of the valley. ‘And it’s the finest of all. They call the tribute pepper wa wa jiao, “baby pepper”, because each pair of peppercorns also has a pair of tiny, embryonic peppercorns, or “babies” (wa wa) at its base.’
“A video where you can see the wawa Huā Jiāo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb63OdnvKDE
and another of the harvest: https://youtu.be/0yTA3IB1Flo
According to the analysis of physical and chemical agriculture Sichuan University it has an aromatic oil content of 7-9%, much higher than other domestic origin (aromatic oil content of 3-5%)
Taylor Holliday: “You told me by email that your own Sichuan pepper tree is growing quite well in Belgium. Who would have thought? I’m going to try to grow one in Nashville now that I know that. Please link to a picture of your tree here so others can see it and be jealous. Thanks!”
http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/36280115aout2014.jpg
http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/666546february2015.jpg
spring is here 😀
http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/252817simulans13avril2015.jpg
For those who wants to learn more, here’s some usefull links:
http://gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com/engl/Zant_pip.html
http://baike.so.com/doc/5372622.html
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs035/1102506082274/archive/1104323477745.html
http://dunagiri.org/herb-cultivation/tejbal
http://www.huajiao.cn/news/种植技术/
http://www.plantphoto.cn/species?species=6871
More great video! I now know the next thing I’m going to try to get my daughter to translate for me. 🙂
And your tree looks amazing! How many years does one take to bear fruit?
I did see a stray Sichuan pepper tree once in the countryside outside Chengdu, but I have never been to Hanyuan. Thanks for the reminder about Fuchsia’s research on it. And all the other great resources.
It begin to bear fruit within three to four years.
A full mature tree can produce around 4 pounds of dry pepper.
And do you know this dish ?
花椒叶粑粑的做法 a Sichuan delicacy with the young pepper leaves : https://youtu.be/1g80d8-nzT4?t=27m30s
Wow! I wish my French wasn’t so rusty. That is Sichuan pepper leaves that she is deep-frying? So cool. I’ve never seen that. I wonder how strong/numbing they are? You should try it with your leaves and let us know!
Yes, it’s the young Sichuan pepper leaves deep fried like a tempura.
I’ve tried with the leaves from my Zanthoxylum Schinifolium (those from my Zanthoxylum Simulans don’t have a distinctive smell) they are not numbing but very fragrant, the smell is very similar to the prickly oil.
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/559599270420158851.jpg
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/196831270420158859.jpg
i’m dissapointed, it’s it’s more or less tasteless. once fried.
They look good! It’s an interesting experiment, even if a bit disappointing. Thanks for letting us know.
Unlike the case of “true” pepper, from the genus Piper, where green peppercorns are indeed the unripe seed pods that when ripe produce black and white pepper, “Green Sichuan pepper” (青花椒) isn’t the unripe pod of red Sichuan pepper (花椒), it’s from a different species in the prickly ash genus.. Wikipedia has an English-language page for the genus Zanthoxylum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanthoxylum) which lists quite a few related plants that share the “ma” flavor to various degrees, as well as a Chinese-language page specifically for 青花椒.
I’ve been shopping for Chinese foodstuffs for many years, but only recently have come across Green sichuan pepper in local grocery stores here in NYC. But as it sometimes the case, when it rains, it pours, and I’ve recently seen several different brands of green Sichuan pepper in Flushing Queens’ Chinatown, and also on several retailers’ websites. Commercially prepared infused oil made from green Sichuan pepper seems to be even more common, for what that’s worth. Happy hunting!
Thanks for you comments. I’ve been told in Sichuan that green and red hua jiao are the same plant at different stages of ripeness, but it makes sense that they would be different plants/species. I wonder why in Sichuan you see only fresh green Sichuan pepper on the vine and never fresh red…
the green sichuan peppercorn is Zan schinifolium
source: https://mega.co.nz/#!jgRTDIgL!LSTQDsaesqkAy5CpCop0wK9KbdrgSlynmxLwUUvPNhg
I wonder what species is the blue pepper they talk about in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V23cDPiey0Q#t=221
Update on my tree, now you can see baby peppercorns 😀
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/61199220june20151.jpg
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/29714320june20152.jpg
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/63013820june20153.jpg
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/44324120june20154.jpg
Cool! Are your trees green or red pepper?
red once ripe, some pics:
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/2261081erjuillet2.jpg
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/13415318septembre2015.jpg
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/64670918sept2015.jpg
Nice! Those are looking great.
Hi,
I’ve tried a very potent brand from China as good as the fresh pepper.
http://i05.c.aliimg.com/img/ibank/2014/928/513/1820315829_2121159850.jpg
The Hanyuan pepper 汉源贡椒 is on the China GI product list, look for the brands with the logo
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/724460Chinesegeographicalindicationprotectionlistlogo.jpg
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/447090hanyuanhuajiao.jpg
Thanks for the tip, Sub! I haven’t seen this brand in the U.S. yet but will be on the lookout. I’ve noticed that specific brands of things come in waves. Whatever the importers are bringing in during that period will be on the shelves of Chinese stores across the U.S., then suddenly they’ll be replaced by some new brands.
Also, I have some huajiao brought back from Chengdu that’s been in my freezer for a year and a half but is still super potent. So I suggest storing it in the freezer.