Complete Sichuan Pantry Collection

This Complete Sichuan Pantry Collection is designed to stock your shelves with a premium version of every specialty ingredient needed to cook classic Sichuan food. It includes products exclusive to The Mala Market and nine of our well-tested, beautifully printed recipe cards for the most-loved dishes of Chengdu and Chongqing. 

The core of the collection is the ingredients for creating ma and la, the defining tastes of Sichuan food. 'Ma' refers to the tingly, citrusy taste of Sichuan peppercorn. Our premium da hong pao Sichuan peppercorns are incomparably fresh, fragrant, potent and seedless.

'La' refers to the heat of chili pepper, and this kit includes the popular facing-heaven zi dan tou whole dried chilies as well as fragrant-hot ground chilies, a mix of three kinds of toasted and ground chilies that is ideal for making chili oil. 

The soul of Sichuan cuisine is doubanjiang, or chili bean paste, made in the Pixian (Pidu) district of Chengdu, and this kit includes the highest-quality douban on the market, handcrafted and aged for three years. It also includes Sichuan's other two umami powerhouses: fermented black soybeans (douchi) and fermented sweet wheat paste. (Unlike the photo, the sweet wheat paste is now packaged in a glass jar.)

Other must-haves include Sichuan's oldest and most esteemed brands of soy sauce and vinegar. Zhongba light soy sauce is naturally brewed for 360 days, and handcrafted Baoning vinegar is aged for 3 years; neither sauce has any additives or preservatives. Like Pixian douban, they are China Time-Honored Brands, in business for centuries, and we are their exclusive U.S. representatives. 

We round out this collection with our own organic, stone-ground sesame paste and Yibin suimiyacai, a fermented mustard pickle used in many classic dishes. 

See individual products on this site for more description of each one, including brandname, provenance, ingredients and production methods.

This collection includes nine Mala Market recipe cards: Sichuan chili oil, mapo doufu, gong bao (kung pao) chicken, dry-fried green beans, dan dan noodles, Chongqing chicken (la zi ji), twice-cooked pork, eggplant in garlic sauce (yu xiang eggplant) and water-boiled fish (shui zhu yu). You'll find many more dishes using these ingredients on our recipe blog, including mala hot pot and dry pot. 

If this is a gift, know that we do not include any pricing info in the box. The collection is packaged with red tissue paper and a product storage and usage guide.