Add description, images, menus and links to your mega menu
A column with no settings can be used as a spacer
Link to your collections, sales and even external links
Add up to five columns
Add description, images, menus and links to your mega menu
A column with no settings can be used as a spacer
Link to your collections, sales and even external links
Add up to five columns
Sichuan Mala Sauce for Stir-Fry and Dry Pot (Gluten-Free)
$14
A readymade mala cooking sauce from Chongqing
This Sichuan Mala Sauce was created for us in Chongqing as a sauce for making spicy dry pot, but it is equally at home in a quick stir-fry or an easy braise. Because it is gluten-free, some of you even use it as a replacement for doubanjiang and as the base of mapo tofu! Try it in all of them, as the jar contains enough concentrated sauce for many dishes.
If you don’t know Sichuan dry pot—called ganguo or mala xiangguo 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—savory, spicy and tingly—but is made more like a non-saucy stir-fry.
The beauty of dry pot is that you can make it from basically anything you want or have on hand; it's hard to mess up because it requires no serious wok skills; and it tastes like Sichuan itself—all that meat and veg and seafood and tofu bathed in a hot-and-numbing mala sauce.
Like hot pot base, 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.
This is not your typical American supermarket stir-fry sauce, where the main ingredients are sugar and soy sauce. Our mala base is mildly numbing from Sichuan pepper and significantly spicy from chili. It actually tastes like something you’d have in Sichuan because it’s based on Pixian chili bean paste (doubanjiang) and Sichuan’s beloved roasted rapeseed oil (caiziyou). It also includes pickled erjingtiao chilies and Sichuan fermented soybeans (douchi), along with a slew of aromatics and spices from the region.
What it does not include is any wheat, so unlike the great majority of fermented Chinese sauces, it is gluten-free! (We have double-tested it for gluten.)
Craft + Process
The Mala Market's Sichuan Mala Sauce for Stir-Fry and Dry Pot is made in small batches for us and to our specifications in Chongqing, the mammoth city where dry pot was invented (and which used to be part of Sichuan). It uses premium ingredients, all made in Chongqing or Sichuan, and contains no artificial flavors or preservatives.
Compare To
Dry pot is very popular in China, so there are many brands of dry pot sauce made in Sichuan. The most popular one on the market (there and here) has nine(!) additives and preservatives on its ingredient list. That is typical of readymade cooking sauces in any country, which is why it took us awhile to find a dry pot sauce that has the authentic taste of Sichuan and Chongqing and is delicious enough to eat over and over, but has no strange additives or preservatives. (It does have a smidge of msg, but msg has been fully exonerated—and its inclusion here allows the use of less salt to attain the same savory flavor.)
Note that this cooking sauce is not a simmer sauce that makes one dish, but a concentrated base that makes many dishes when combined with cooking oil and, optionally, water/broth.
How To Use It
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, or flavor multiple pots of water/broth for a soup noodle or braise.
Guide for Dry Pot and Stir-Fry
You can think of dry pot as a large stir-fry. However, because it has multiple ingredients of your choosing, most of the ingredients are pre-cooked. Making a superior stir-fry at home also often entails pre-cooking some ingredients, but in the case of a dry pot you are not cooking the ingredients in the sauce, you are simply combining cooked ingredients with the sauce as the final step.
This method also allows you to make a larger stir-fry than one can normally make in a wok; while you will probably limit a stir-fry to 1 or 1.5 pounds of ingredients, you can easily make a 3-pound dry pot in a 14-inch wok or large pot.
As a general guide, use 2-3 tablespoons Sichuan Mala Sauce per pound of ingredient for a dry pot or spicy stir-fry. If you prefer less heat, simply use less sauce than directed, though do remember that a real mala sauce is meant to be spicy!
Step-by-step instructions for dry pot and stir-fry
Pick your proteins (chicken wings, chicken thighs, pork belly, pork riblets, Chinese sausage, shrimp, fish balls, etc.) and pre-cook by stir-frying or deep-frying one at a time. Set aside.
Then pick your vegetables (yu choy, broccoli, cauliflower, lotus root, celtuce, green bean, potato, mushroom, wood ear, etc.) and blanch them in boiling water until almost done. To include noodles in your dry pot, cook a portion until al dente. Some ingredients, like dried or fried tofu or tofu skin, may only need a soak or no prep.
Finally, stir-fry some aromatics (garlic, ginger, green onion) and, optionally, additional spices (dried chilies, whole Sichuan pepper, cumin seed) in a generous amount of oil. Add the sauce, stir-fry briefly, then add back all the ingredients and mix with the sauce, cooking just until hot. Add a small amount of water or broth if it seems too dry. Garnish with sesame seeds and serve with rice.
Guide for Braises and Soups
Because Sichuan Mala Sauce has a base of Pixian doubanjiang, you can use it in place of douban in some recipes, either to switch up the taste or to avoid the gluten in pure doubanjiang. (While Pixian doubanjiang normally includes wheat, the one used for this recipe does not. And before you ask, no, unfortunately, we have never seen a pure doubanjiang without gluten.)
Some customers report loving it in mapo tofu. We use it often to cook Sichuan braised meats, replacing the douban with mala sauce in a recipe such as pork-rib braise or beef noodles. Just 2-3 tablespoons, combined with a few aromatics and spices and a splash of soy sauce and Shaoxing wine, make a wonderful soup broth for braised pork or beef noodles.
Storage
While this product is stable at room temperature, we recommend refrigerating once opened to maintain peak freshness.
Gluten Free: While Pixian doubanjiang normally includes wheat, the one used for this recipe does not. (But unfortunately, we have never seen a pure doubanjiang without gluten.)
A Note on MSG: Monosodium glutamate has been used for decades in Chinese products and recipes. MSG is simply the salt form of glutamic acid, an amino acid that stimulates umami receptors on the tongue. Because it contains 60% less sodium than table salt, many chefs use it to intensify flavor while dramatically reducing salt content in their dishes. That is why you will find a small amount of MSG in some traditional Chinese products and Mala Market-branded sauces.
The belief in the U.S. that MSG is bad for you is based on pseudoscience, as decades of rigorous, double-blind, placebo-controlled scientific studies have repeatedly debunked the myth that MSG causes headaches, numbness or other adverse reactions. Less than 1% of the population may have mild, temporary sensitivities to large doses of MSG (which are also found naturally in tomatoes, cheeses and mushrooms).
Nutrition Facts Servings: 12
Serv. size: 1 Tbsp (25g)
Amount per serving: Calories 60
Total Fat 6g (8% DV), Sat. Fat 3g (15% DV), Trans Fat 0g, Cholest. 0mg (0% DV), Sodium 1475mg (64% DV), Total Carb. 2g (1% DV), Fiber 0g (0% DV), Total Sugars 1g (Incl. 1g Added Sugars, 0% DV), Protein 1g, Vit. D (0% DV), Calcium (0% DV), Iron (0% DV), Potas. (0% DV).
