Chili goop so good it's addictive

I recently made a big batch of this rich, gravelly paste and packed it up into little jars so that I could give it to some good friends who are chiliheads like me. And also like me, they devoured it with pleasure.

Flaky Hunan-style chili paste is one of my absolute favorite things to have around the kitchen. It smells terrific, the nutty and spicy aromas acting as some sort of potent pheromones as far as I am concerned.

And the taste… a light heat, a gentle chewiness, a subtle saltiness, and an amazing depth of flavor makes this a great, basic chili concoction that goes with just about everything short of cheesecake, and now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it would be good there, too.

Welcome to my addiction

Even though this is from Hunan, it is not incredibly hot. Rather, the coarse, relatively seedless dried chilies create a warm base that vibrates gently on the tongue. This contrasts perfectly with the chopped fermented black beans, which serve to tantalize the taste buds through their salt and that savory, meaty flavor the Chinese call xiān 鮮 (and what the Japanese refer to as umami).

Binding them all together is another ingredient, one I have come to positively adore: toasty tea oil. Pressed from the seeds of the camellia that produces actual tea leaves, kŭcháyóu 苦茶油 (literally, bitter tea oil) is a nutty amber liquid that is used throughout the south-central provinces of Hunan and Jiangxi for cooking and tossing with pickles. Not every Chinese grocery store carries it, but I usually locate it in a place that carries lots of Taiwanese goods.

Taiwanese tea oil

And that is another point: get the Taiwanese product, which (to my mouth, at least) tastes unadulterated. It’s not especially cheap—around $6 for about 600 ml.—but it is worth it.

Tea oil also has a very high smoke point, making this great for deep- and stir-frying. Again, that gentle nuttiness also acts as an extra layer of seasoning, so I use this to fry lightly flavored ingredients where it can shine.

Strangely enough, though, it holds its own against the dried chilies and fermented black beans here. I think this is because it is so totally different in flavor from the other two ingredients that it hits some different sensory receptors. Or maybe it’s just me.

Just a warning, but if you end up loving this as much as I do, you will find yourself eating the goop as is, or else loading enough of it on your food that it's a bit embarrassing. I will make scrambled eggs, for example, and drown them in this delicious crunch, those full flavors finding the perfect partner in the soft yellow curds on my plate. My husband tends to butter his toast at moments like this and just raise his eyebrows at my obscenely-laden eggs. To each his own, I guess.

Chop the beans

So, you can see that I am an addict for the goop in this recipe, and because of that you will find a very large ratio of solids to oil here. If you want more oil in order to turn this into a mingyou, add another ½ to 1 cup of oil to the recipe. Store it in the fridge if you don’t plow through it as fast as I do. Mine never gets old enough to turn stale.

Hunan-style chili paste

Xiàngshì làjiàng  湘式辣醬

Hunan
Makes 1½ cups

1 cup fresh oil, preferably tea oil, but any flavorful vegetable oil will do

1 cup coarse Korean chili flakes with very few seeds

½ cup fermented black beans, rinsed and coarsely chopped

1. Pour the oil into a cold wok. Add the chili flakes and black beans. Turn on the heat to medium or a bit higher and cook this trio, stirring every once in a while as they start to bubble.

Nirvana in the making

2. When the chili flakes start to brown and the oil is a deep red, stir pretty much constantly to keep the flakes from burning. It is very important that you toast the chilies and black beans long enough for their characters to change: for the chilies to turn from slightly sour and soft to toasty and crunchy, and for the beans to become chewy and release their aromas into the oil, and therefore into the chilies. 

3. After about 15 minutes, when the flakes are a very dark color and taste very nutty, remove the wok from the heat. (Be careful not to let them burn.) You will know they are ready when they sound gravelly as you stir them; plus, they will smell insanely delicious. Scoop the oil and solids into a bowl or a clean jar, let them come to room temperature, and cover; refrigerate or can them for longer storage.

Citrus chili oil that rocks

Homemade chili oil that has a good layer of ground ingredients lurking at the bottom of a jar is -- in my little universe, at least -- the sign of an excellent Chinese restaurant, one that pays attention to the little details and doesn't just scoop a sour sauce out of a generic can.

One such place in downtown Taipei was a Cantonese dive called Yangcheng Fandian, or literally Sheep City Restaurant. Why Sheep City? 

Well, Yangcheng is the name of a town in Guangdong up the Pearl River from Hong Kong and almost directly north of Macau. In other words, this is an area where good food is to be found.

Calling it a restaurant, though, was a bit of an overstatement, for this was just a hole in the wall with an array of blasting propane burners along the back wall, a sheet of corrugated plastic reaching out into the alley to protect diners on rainy days, and a bunch of folding tables and chairs. Located on a busy alley next to the post office and, more importantly, across the street from the many bookstores we adored, Yangcheng was a place we frequented very, very often. The food was dependable home-style fare, and they had a particular knack for using fresh ginger in just the right amounts. 

But what we really came for was their homemade chili oil and its slightly crunchy, slightly chewy goop that we would toss with abandon on every plate that hit our table. Even the rice was not out of bounds, and I would invariably end the meal by polishing off my bowl of rice with a huge glop of chili goop, wipe the chili-induced heat off my shiny face, and then walk down to the street, happily worrying any lingering bits out from between my teeth.

Dark & delicious

I have written about homemade chili oils before, but now I want to introduce you to something that I have been holding back just a little bit jealously. It is one of those recipes that I am proud to call my own, that has developed over the years into a personal favorite: Citrus Chili Oil with Black Beans.

The road to this recipe started with a desire to re-create this delicious sauce once we had returned to the States. I made some relatively good ones -- it's hard to go wrong with chili oil -- but they weren't yet perfect. And then I came across the late Barbara Tropp's second and final work, China Moon Cookbook, that includes favorites from her restaurant of the same name and which has many of her delicious Chinese-California fusion creations.

The recipe that struck me between the eyes was for her China Moon Chili-Orange Oil. This had all of the components I was seeking, plus a vibrant citrus note that took this condiment to stratospheric levels. In the 20 years since then, I have monkeyed around with it, adding more savory things, halving the oil (I am a sucker for the lovely goop at the bottom of the jar), and amping up the aromas with a whole bunch of ginger and garlic. 

Use the oil as you would any "bright oil," and savor the goop as a dipping sauce, to flavor marinades, and to perk up stir-fries. It goes with just about anything. And will prove highly addictive.

Citrus chili oil with black beans
 Juxiang douchi layou 橘香豆豉辣油
Cantonese with a twist

Makes about 1½ cups

Add dry aromatics to the oil

3 medium organic oranges

1 organic Meyer (or other) lemon 

7 or 8 garlic cloves

4 tablespoons fermented black beans (see Tips)

1 cup peanut or vegetable oil

2 tablespoons roasted sesame oil

2 tablespoons finely minced ginger

½ cup coarsely ground chili pepper (see Tips)

1. Scrub the oranges and lemon; pat dry. Peel off the skins (colored parts only) with a potato peeler, and then dice the zest finely. (Use the flesh of the fruit for something else.)

2. Smack each garlic clove and peel it, but leave the peeled cloves more or less whole. Coarsely chop the fermented black beans; there is no need to rinse them. 

3. Pour both oils into a small skillet or saucepan and add all of the other ingredients to the cool oil. Heat this pan over medium until the oil starts to bubble, and then lower the heat and simmer the sauce for around 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cook the sauce until the oil is a day-glo orange, the chili powder is dark brown, and the garlic cloves are soft. Remove from heat and cool. Store in a covered jar in a cool place, preferably in the fridge if you are not going to use it up within two weeks.

Tips

Stir the bottom as it cooks

Scrub the oranges and lemons well to remove any dust that might have worked its way into the pores; if they are commercial fruits, use hot water and a brush to clean off any wax. Dry the fruit well before zesting them, as water will explode in the hot oil.

Experiment with different types of dried chili powder, adding more if you love the heat. The chili powder can be very coarsely ground with the seeds still whole, or you can use a sifted variety that has the seeds removed. I like the varieties available at Korean grocery stores, since the turnover is fast and the offerings are both varied and of great quality.

Use the black beans that come in plastic bags or jars that don't have any sauce. They should be plump and dark, rather than shriveled and gray. You shouldn't rinse the beans here; just chop them roughly so that each bean is opened up and the flavor can ooze out.

Keeping the ginger cloves whole protects them from cooking too quickly and burning. This way they slowly poach in the oil and remain luscious. After cooking, smash the garlic with your spoon.

Starting the sauce off by adding the dry ingredients to the cool oil protects them from cooking too quickly. This slow simmer gives the aromatics a chance to release their oils and flavors before they brown, making the oil a gorgeous orange hue and the goop at the bottom a crunchy, chewy obsession.

Bright oils from Sichuan

One of the best secret weapons to have on hand in a Chinese kitchen are the deliciously fragrant mingyou, or "bright oils," of Sichuan. Once you start to use them, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them.

These are nothing more than encapsulations of flavors in simple cooking oils, and they're traditionally used mainly as finishing touches for appetizers, entrees, soups, what have you. 

I've become a huge fan of them because they seem to spark up just about everything they touch, adding fine layers of warm scent to dishes that need that bit of oomph, gently or unabashedly numbing the lips or titillating the tongue in fiery foods, and helping smooth out bridges between ingredients that don't want to mingle.

Chili pepper oil

For example, a few days ago I talked about Manchurian Chicken Salad, and as one reader suggested, Sichuan peppercorn oil would add a nice "kick" to it, and I agree. (In fact, that's just the sort of inventiveness that puts me in awe of the folks who read this blog.)  Sichuan peppercorn oil would be perfect for turning this mild northeastern dish into something that a Chengdu native would dive into with singular delight.  And chili oil does the same thing.

The problem is that storebought oils tend to be musty where they should be alive with flavor, drab when they should sing. Besides that, you have zero control over how good the oil is, the freshness of the spices, and how spicy or numbing it turns out to be.

Enter your new best friend: homemade mingyou.

Green and red peppercorns

These cost only pennies to make, and you can make them as individual as your palate is. Put them in pretty bottle and give them as gifts, too. These are simple to prepare, are ready by the time you fix the rest of your menu, and keep well for a few weeks as long as you store them in a cool dry place. I put mine in little squirt bottles, which makes using them even more fun. And don't limit yourself to these two recipes; ginger oil is great if fresh shreds are slowly fried in oil, and Green Onion Oil is a knockout!

If you plan to create the chili pepper oil, try to employ a variety of dried chilies, as each kind has a special contribution to make. I like a small handful of Thai chilies, a couple of habaneros or dundicuts to amp up the searing heat, a big old pasilla pepper for dark richness, and some coarsely and finely ground chilies, as these brown faster plus add a delectable smokiness to the oil. Anyway, try this recipe the way it is;  if it's too hot, just add more oil, and then next time add different kinds of chilies until you come up with the combination you really enjoy.

Hell in a bottle

As for the Sichuan peppercorns, I've recently come across a new candidate on my Chinese grocery shelves that is green. Called qing huajiao, or green Sichuan peppercorns, they offer a nice herbal flavor and have been terrific in stir-fries, like last week's Daqian Chicken. They would also be good in Sichuan style pickles (coming up soon) or braises, but I tried them as the flavoring for a mingyou, and they were seriously disappointing - very little flavor, although the oil was a lovely shade of green. No, when you are making peppercorn finishing oil, go with the ripe red ones, and you won't be disappointed.

And for a real taste of Sichuan, either combine the two oils or use half the chilies and half the peppercorns to 2 cups oil. This is called mala you (numbing spicy oil), and it's every bit as wonderful!

Chili pepper oil 
Lajiao you  辣椒油  
Sichuan

Makes 2 cups

My chili smorgasbord

2 cups peanut or vegetable oil
1 pasilla chili, torn into bits
3 habanero chilies
8 Thai chilies, broken in half
2 tablespoons coarsely ground chili peppers
1 tablespoon finely ground chili pepper

1. Combine the ingredients in a small saucepan or wok. Bring the oil and the peppers slowly to a simmer over medium heat, and then lower the heat until the oil just barely bubbles. Cook the chilies this way until they float and have turned black. 

2. Remove the pan from the heat and let the peppers sit in the oil until it is cool. Store the oil along with the chilies in a jar in a cool place. If you like, strain out a small portion of the oil into a plastic squeeze bottle and place it next to your stove so that you have instant access.

3. The oil is best if used within a couple of weeks. If it's longer than that, taste the oil first to ensure that it is fresh before you use it.

Numbing delight

Sichuan peppercorn oil 
Huajiao you  花椒油 

Sichuan

Makes 1 cup

1 cup peanut or vegetable oil
½  cup whole, red Sichuan peppercorns

1. Follow the directions for Chili Pepper Oil, using Sichuan peppercorns instead of the chilies.