A Classic Example of Sichuan’s Jiachang Wei Flavor

This recipe is part of our series on fùhé wèi (复合味), Sichuan’s 20+ complex flavors. For more details about this flavor combination, along with other recipes that exemplify this profile, visit our new Jiachang Wei index page. (Other fuhe wei combinations can be found through the menu.)

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Jiācháng (家常), often translated as “homestyle,” is one of Sichuan cooking’s foundational complex flavor profiles and is an important part of daily cooking across the province. While twice-cooked pork is the most famous jiachang dish, made in Sichuan restaurants the world over, when I think about this flavor profile—built around doubanjiang, soy sauce and salt—the first things that come to my mind are the stir-fried meat slivers, chǎo ròu si (炒肉丝), made by my grandmothers and my mom. 

I grew up eating countless versions of these dishes, improvised from whatever was on hand: mostly pork, but sometimes beef and chicken, stir-fried with seasonal vegetables such as young ginger, garlic stems and celtuce flavored with the rich, umami-packed notes of Pixian doubanjiang. When the meat is slicked with that red oil, I know it’s going to be a “rice thief”—a dish so rich and flavorful that it encourages the eater to add lots of rice to the bowl. 

One classic version of this simple combination, which I’ve been eager to recreate in my Berlin kitchen, is stir-fried beef and celery, qíncài niúròusī (芹菜牛肉丝). I’ve had a fair number of different versions of the dish, but one especially memorable one came from Laoliaojia (“at home with Laoliao”), a small eatery near my old university in Chengdu. The spot is essentially one man’s kitchen, tucked in a residential building, with a menu scribbled on a whiteboard featuring quick-fried dishes like pork and beef. Chef Laoliao cooks everything fresh to order, and on a quiet day, a plate could land on the table within minutes, the tender beef slivers glistening in the red sauce, the celery holding its crunch and the mildly spicy red peppers adding a bright flavor and a pop of color. 

This dish (also known as jiācháng niúròusī ; 家常牛肉丝) is a good example of the way that the phrase jiachang, or homestyle, can refer either to dishes that are rooted in homestyle cooking or to dishes defined by the flavors of douban and soy sauce, because it meets both definitions: It is made in home kitchens all across the province with inexpensive, seasonal ingredients (with the meat used sparingly), and it is also seasoned with doubanjiang and soy sauce.

The preparation is very straightforward: First, you cut the meat into slivers, marinate it, velvet it and stir-fry until it is just cooked. Then the you add the bloomed doubanjiang. Finally, you add the vegetable(s) and finish everything with a quick sauce containing the soy sauce.

To develop my version of the dish, I referenced a few older cookbooks, such as Popular Sichuan Cuisine (Dàzhòng Chuāncài, 大众川菜), and one on Sichuan cooking techniques, Sichuan Cuisine Explained (Xì Shuō Chuāncài, 细说川菜), then adjusted the ingredients and steps to make it easy to execute. I skipped the step of thickening the sauce with starch (which you find in some versions of this dish) because I prefer a cleaner finish, and I added red chili peppers (as the cook at Laoliaojia does) for brightness in both color and flavor. The celery goes in last, so that it holds its crunch and color. I also used a small amount of baking soda in the beef marinade, to keep the beef tender. A small splash of vinegar and a little sugar round out the sauce without making it noticeably sweet or sour. 

Preparing Ingredients for Stir-Fried Beef and Celery

This dish comes together quickly, but a few details separate a good plate from a great one: 

Preparing the Doubanjiang 

Doubanjiang is the backbone of this dish, but it needs preparation. Most versions of Pixian doubanjiang contain large chunks of fava beans that won’t break down in the wok. For a smoother sauce, chop it finely before you cook it. A quick blitz in a food processor works well for bigger batches. I like to use a mix of red-oil doubanjiang and a more aged doubanjiang to get both a bright red color and a good depth of flavor. 

Blooming the doubanjiang—frying it slowly in oil until it releases its red color—is an essential step, especially for aged doubanjiang, which is drier than the young versions. This step draws out the douban’s flavor, deepens the color and removes any raw notes. Most recipes tell you to push the meat aside and bloom the douban in the same wok you’re already cooking in, which works for dishes like mapo tofu. For this dish, however, the wok is usually too hot to add it after you’ve cooked the beef; if you do so, the paste will burn. (You can also overcook the beef.) Instead, after several rounds of testing, I landed on this solution: I bloom the doubanjiang first and set it aside, then fry the beef, add the prepared doubanjiang back into the wok and then add the celery at the end of the cooking sequence. This way, the beef is not overcooked and the doubanjiang is properly fried.

Preparing the Beef

Lean cuts like flank steak and top sirloin work well in this dish. In Sichuan cooking, the standard cut for this dish is èr cū sī (二粗丝), slivers about 2.5–3 inches long and 1/8 inch thick (7cm by 3 mm), roughly the width of a chopstick tip. To make this shape, you slice the beef into thick slices, then cut these slices into thin slivers. Uniformity helps with even cooking, but I’ve eaten plenty of imperfect versions that were still delicious, so don’t let the cutting stress you out too much.

Using the Quick-Frying Technique for Stir-Fried Beef with Celery

The most common way that this dish fails at home is when you end up with a wet, grey, slightly sad pile of beef instead of juicy, nicely seared meat. The cause of these failures is almost always insufficient heat combined with leaving the meat in the pan for too long. This is because when the wok isn’t hot enough, the starch coating on the meat dissolves into the cooking liquid, and you lose both texture and appearance. 

To avoid this problem, my recipe uses a xiǎochǎo (小炒) technique, in which you use high heat to cook small cuts of meat in one quick go. Make sure to preheat your wok until it just begins to smoke, use enough oil (the full amount called for in the recipe) and avoid crowding the pan. In restaurants, xiaochao dishes are normally done in a minute. At home, on an induction or gas stove, the whole stir-fry should take only 3–4 minutes.

For more examples of Sichuan’s jiachang flavor profile, see Taylor’s Chengdu Huiguorou, Twice-Cooked Pork (回锅肉) and Red-Braised Ribs and Radish (Hongshao Paigu, 红烧排骨) or Kathy’s Ants Climbing a Tree (Mayi Shangshu, 蚂蚁上树).