The Complete Guide to Sichuan Chili Oil

Chris and Steph at Chinese Cooking Demystified have recently put out a whopper of a video on Sichuan chili oils, walking us through seven different versions of Sichuan's "mother sauce," showing how they are made and how each one is used. It's about 35  minutes long, but here is a guide to how to watch and the ingredients we carry to make them:

The first 3 minutes or so introduce the seven chili oils and the types of chilies and oil that Sichuan chefs and home cooks use—pointing to our Sichuan Dried Chili Collection as an example of the preferred chilies and roasted rapeseed oil (caiziyou) as the must-have oil. Chris then goes on to suggest possible substitutes for both, but you won't need those!

9:30: Red chili oil (hong you): He uses two dried chilies and a chili powder (because that's what he has on hand). You could start with three dried chilies from the aforementioned collection, or our fragrant hot ground chilies, which is itself a blend of three of these chilies that have already been roasted in oil and perfectly ground. CCD's recipe for this most basic and useful of Sichuan chili oils is very similar in ingredients and method to our step-by-step aromatic chili oil recipe.

15:50: Mala chili oil: For a numbing version of Sichuan chili oil, he adds heaps of both green and red Sichuan pepper, roasted and ground. 

19:23 Home-style chili oil: Here Chris points out that most of these recipes are what restaurants do and says home cooks would simplify the process, using pre-ground chilies instead of whole and using fewer aromatics to flavor the oil because they would be using a higher-grade, already very flavorful caiziyou. He assumes you will have neither of those ingredients, but if you're shopping at The Mala Market, you will! 

21:59: Old oil: A more complex, restaurant sauce, lao you, or old oil, is kind of an all-purpose sauce used for soup base, stir-fry or dry pot. It starts with a base of ciba, or reconstituted, pounded dried chilies. It also includes Pixian doubanjiang (chili bean paste) and douchi (fermented soybeans), all cooked in oil. This is the point where I am going to recommend a substitute! Our Mala Sauce for Stir-Fry and Dry Pot is a similar concoction, made for us in small batches and with no preservatives (or gluten) in Chongqing, that has gotten rave reviews since we debuted it a few months ago. 

25:38: Scorched chili oil: Simply dried chilies fried in caiziyou until they are deeply browned and flavorful (not burned!), with a bit of Sichuan peppercorn. Stored in their oil, they can be readily used for gong bao (kung pao) dishes—or elsewhere if you enjoy that scorched-chili flavor. 

27:47: Pickled chili oil: This oil starts with pickled er jing tiao chili, a pickled smaller, hotter chili and pickled ginger, all fried in an aromatic oil. Useful for "fish fragrant" dishes, it can also be used in noodle sauces. Chris says that pickled er jing tiao is impossible to source in the West, which is not entirely the case. We have occasionally sourced it from another importer here and are in the process of importing a premium version ourselves (there are a lot of FDA hoops to jump through for pickles!). But I personally really look forward to making this sauce once they arrive and, as a pickle lover, putting it on everything. 

30:39: Fresh chili oil: Instead of using dried chilies, which is the norm in Sichuan, this one is made with fresh, moderately hot chilies and fresh young ginger, fried in aromatic oil. It is popular in the  Zigong area of Sichuan. 

33:06: Seasoned chili oils: This is the category CCD uses for any commercial chili oil that takes one of the base Sichuan chili oils and adds salt, sugar, msg, and crunchy bits like garlic, shallot, peanut, soybean, etc. If the product retains a fairly high ratio of oil to ground chili sediment, like our Chengdu Crispy Chili Oil, it should still be called a chili oil. If it is basically all ground chilies and crunchy bits, like our Guizhou Chili Crisp, it is usually called chili crisp or chili crunch in the West. 

And that's it! Thank you so much, Chris and Steph, for this amazingly thorough and enlightening tutorial! 
 

Liangban Cai Save the Summer

Sichuan liangban cai, literally "cold-dressed dishes" but referring to the whole category of dishes that are served at room temperature, are very often dressed in a sauce that includes chili oil. Just mix your homemade (or high-quality store-bought) chili oil and a few other ingredients from your Sichuan pantry—such as soy sauce, black vinegar, sesame oil or paste—to sauce a quickly cooked veg, and you're done and dusted! 

Of all the vegetables that love a chili-oil dressing, potatoes may lap it up the most voraciously. Dunk the still-hot boiled slices—just on the border between crisp and soft—into the sauce, and the thirsty potatoes will soak it all in, so that every bite will give you that thrill of spicy, salty, sweet and sour umami that is the hallmark of a Sichuan liangban. 

Here are a few more of the many vegetables that love a chili oil-based dressing:

• Eggplant With Roasted Chilies: One of my very favorite cold dishes, luscious roasted eggplant gets a topping of mild roasted green chilies and an umami dressing.
• Spicy Daikon Carrot Salad: It doesn't get any easier or fresher than this!
• Omnivore's Cookbook's Spicy Cucumber Salad: Everyone's favorite cucumber salad gets a spiral cut that allows every bite to be thoroughly sauced—not to mention look impressively fancy.
• The Woks of Life's Zucchini Salad: Raw zucchini salad with chili oil and a surprising touch of lemon. Now you know what to do with that bumper crop.
• The Woks of Life's Spicy Sichuan Okra Salad: The dressing for this boiled okra is spiked with sesame paste, a common addition to Sichuan sauces for cold dishes. Okra goo even helps thicken the sauce. Give it a try!