Making Sichuan a Cinch
Greetings, Friends of The Mala Market,
Trade war be damned! We've got the most exciting launch of our year to distract us from that calamity. Not only because this sauce came in before the new 145% tariffs kicked in, but also because we've been working on this cooking sauce for almost a year and dreaming about it for many years. The Mala Market's Sichuan Mala Sauce for Stir-Fry and Dry Pot is a game-changer for us, and we think it will be for you too. You know we encourage you to cook Sichuan food from scratch, but even the most confident cook loves the convenience of having a jar of readymade cooking sauce in the pantry—especially one that tastes as good, or better, than one you can create yourself. Keep reading for all the details, but know that not only does this Chongqing-made sauce taste like eating in Sichuan, it is preservative-free and gluten-free to boot!
Enjoy!
🌶 Taylor & Fongchong 🌶
P.S. We've also got a few goodies newly back in stock— pickled peppers!—and some snack-size Chinese food news. |
|
 |
Sichuan Mala Sauce for Stir-Fry and Dry Pot (Gluten-Free)
|
$13.00
|
|
Do you know Sichuan dry pot? Called ganguo (干锅) or mala xiangguo (麻辣香锅) in China, it's a wildly popular dish there that is basically hot pot without the broth, meaning it has the same flavors as Sichuan mala hot pot but is made more like a stir-fry.
Like hot pot, you can make the sauce for dry pot from scratch but it will require almost every ingredient in your Sichuan pantry and then some, which is why most people even in Sichuan use a readymade sauce as the base for dry pot.
However, the most popular dry pot sauce on the market has nine(!) additives and preservatives on its ingredient list. That is typical of readymade cooking sauces, which is why it took us awhile to find a dry pot sauce that has the full, robust, authentic taste of Sichuan and Chongqing dry pot and is delicious enough to eat over and over, but does not have strange additives or preservatives.
This is also not your American supermarket stir-fry sauce, where the main ingredient is sugar. The base of this sauce is Pixian chili bean paste (doubanjiang) and roasted rapeseed oil (caiziyou). It also includes pickled erjingtiao chilies and Sichuan fermented soybeans (douchi), along with a slew of aromatics and spices.
The Mala Market's Sichuan Mala Sauce for Stir-Fry and Dry Pot is made for us and to our specifications in Chongqing. It tastes like eating dry pot in Chongqing, so expect a bit of numbing and quite a lot of chili heat. If you prefer less heat, simply use less sauce than directed, though do remember that a real mala sauce is meant to be spicy!
Unlike the great majority of fermented Chinese sauces, it is gluten-free! Yes, we have double-tested it for gluten.
This jar is enough to generously sauce 6 pounds of ingredients, making anywhere from 2 to 4 dry pots, depending on how many people you are feeding and how spicy they like it. Or, it will make up to 6 simple, quick stir-fries of a couple ingredients.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Dry Pot With Shrimp, Fried Tofu and Pork Belly...
...and Chinese cauliflower, yu choy, green beans, potato, wood ear mushroom and er jing tiao chilies. My dry pot recipe is written for 3 pounds of ingredients and is meant to serve four people (or more with side dishes).
I was completely enamored with dry pot when I first met it. I mean, here was a dish that you could make from basically anything you wanted or had on hand, that was pretty hard to mess up because it required no serious wok skills, and that tasted like Sichuan itself—all that meat and veg and seafood and tofu bathed in an exhilirating hot-and-numbing mala sauce.
Dry pot is more a method than a recipe. Here is the basic blueprint:
- Pick your protein(s) and pan-fry or stir-fry each one individually
- Pick your vegetables, cut them into bite-size pieces and blanche in boiling water until almost done
- Stir-fry aromatics (garlic, ginger) in a generous amount of oil; add optional additional spices (Sichuan pepper, dried chilies, cumin); add the sauce; then add back the pre-cooked proteins and vegetable and toss to warm and coat. Done!
As a guide, FC and I both have a pretty high spice tolerance and we find our new dry pot sauce medium hot; husband/dad has low spice tolerance, and he finds it quite hot, but still edible and enjoyable. Adjust spiciness (and sodium) for your diners by using more or less sauce. And if you are a true heat seeker, add additional Sichuan pepper and dried chilies to the pot.
At the other end of the dry pot spectrum, FC makes a quick stir-fry of nothing but fried tofu puffs, scallions and garlic with our dry pot sauce in less than 10 minutes from start to finish.
|
|
 |
Dry Pot With Chicken Wings and Shrimp...
...and lotus root, potato and celery. Xueci Cheng's recipe using our dry pot sauce is based on a total of 2 pounds of five main ingredients.
Xueci grew up eating ganguo in Sichuan, and particularly in Mianyang, a northern Sichuan city that also lays claim to inventing dry pot, along with Chongqing (and probably other cities!). As always, Xueci has gone deep on the history:
"Like braised chicken with taro (yuer ji, 芋儿鸡), dry pot belongs to a sub-genre of Sichuan cuisine called jianghu cai (江湖菜), a recent culinary trend that focuses on bold flavors and fresh ingredients. In Lan Yong’s book Research on Jianghu Cuisine in Sichuan and Chongqing (巴蜀江湖菜历史调查报告), he describes this culinary trend as bold and robust, almost a “wild Sichuan cuisine” compared to more traditional dishes like kung pao chicken.
"Jianghu dishes are served in large platters or pots and typically take center stage as the main course. They often feature affordable inland meats like pork, fish and chicken cut into large, rustic pieces with no intricate knife work. Seasoning is intense with generous use of spices, aromatics and oil. Many jianghu dishes combine a variety of ingredients in one pot, and they’re often named after their place of origin, adding to their geographic identity."
|
|
 |
Pickled Er Jing Tiao Chilies (Sichuan Pickled Chilies, Pao La Jiao)
|
$9.00
|
Back in stock!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Yibin Yacai (Suimiyacai, Sichuan Preserved Mustard Green), Set of 2
|
$11.00
|
Back in stock!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Soup Base for Mala Hot Pot (Sichuan Hot Pot, Mala Huo Guo, Mala Tang, Chuan Chuan Xiang)
|
$12.00
|
Back in stock!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Buzzworthy
-
Chef Wang makes dry pot, aka mala xiangguo, in (a barely edited) 4 minutes. His is made with his own branded hot pot base, but the method is the same as ours.
- While our new dry pot sauce includes no preservatives or weird chemicals, it does include a smidge of MSG, which not only makes it more delicious but also allows the use of a bit less salt to arrive at the right taste—two of the main benefits of MSG. On the occasion of the launch, I have updated my defense of MSG, first written in 2014, with a reading list of the scientific info fully exonerating the flavor enhancer that is 100% identical to the umami found in mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese and many other foods you love. (One of the minuscule minority with a real reaction to MSG? Please don't write me—just avoid the sauce. We clearly list all ingredients on every product page.)
- Archaeologists at a site in Ziyang, about 100 km southeast of Chengdu, have discovered 60,000-year-old Sichuan pepper seeds among the other foodstuffs of a Paleolithic society. China Daily reports: "They are the oldest Sichuan pepper seeds unearthed at sites with human activity worldwide, an extremely rare discovery even at historical sites that are just a few hundred years old," Zheng said. "It suggests that tens of millennia ago, ancient humans in Sichuan may have already used it for flavoring. The love for spicy, numbing flavors might truly be etched in Sichuan people's DNA!"
- Cookbook author Andrea Nguyen unwittingly channeled our motto when she told The Kitchn what is always in her fridge: "I like this handcrafted soy sauce from Mala Market—it’s inky and thick and luscious tasting. I use it for dipping or drizzling on a steamed fish kind of situation. It’s a finishing soy sauce; you’re not cooking with this one. This is something that people think about with olive oil or salt for finishing, using nice-quality stuff. And why can’t we have nice-quality Asian ingredients to use, too? I’m like, hello, if I’m going to spend that much money for olive oil, why don’t I spend that much money for soy sauce?"
|
|
|
