Sichuan Chili Oil: the Complete Guide

19 Replies to “Sichuan Chili Oil: the Complete Guide”

1. Hey guys, unfortunately we're sort of rushing out the door (got some stuff to sort over in Guangdong, train's in an hour!), so I'll have to scribble some notes down later on 🙂 There were a couple things that we didn't touch on in this video (e.g. hotpot base – perhaps this should also count as a chili oil?) that we go into perhaps excruciating detail about in the Substack post. So do check it out if you're curious: https://chinesecookingdemystified.substack.com/p/sichuan-food-like-the-restaurants

2. If you didn't pull it out of dumpster or sewer, then it's not real Chinese Chili Oil.

3. What is sand ginger?

4. a pretty common thing here is that all the chilies are some varieties of red-chili peppers; are green chilies (the sort used in South Asian/Southeast Asian food) used at all?

5. The fact that this level of knowledge and application is free is crazy😂.

   What a wonderful job, thank you!

6. Sichuan chili oil's lesser known but often more robust cousin, douban dip. There's a beef hot place in Xinjin, Chengdu with an out-of-this-world chili oil/douban-based dip.

7. I can buy xiaomila, chaotianiao, zidantou, and denglongjiao in The Netherlands. My issue is that the quality is just not so good. They are wayy to dry. Not leathery like in your videos. Instead they just break apart. Frying up the chilies whole or even in chunks barely stains the oil. Naturally, I imagine them to be less fragrant. However I dont have a frame of reference. Still though, making your recipe hong you with a blend of these chilies still is delicious.

8. Amazing deep dive!

9. You can buy Extra Virgin Rapeseed Oil from organic grocers here in Germany and considering it contains many antioxidants, it should be safe to heat up past the smoke point, just like olive oil. From my testing I've noticed that it does change flavour in an unpleasent way if exposed to high heat for a prolonged period of time, like 5-10 minutes of high heat. However heating it only shortly to the required temperature preserves most of the nutty flavours.
   What I don't know is if that flavour is at all comparable to caiziyou, but considering they're both unprocessed oils from different cultivars of rapeseed it should at least be somewhat similar.

10. The note on fragrance jumped out at me—a favorite Yunnan food YouTuber’s subtitles mention dishes being fragrant a lot and I wondered about the emphasis

11. I wonder what Chinese fermented hot pepper sauces are there and how different are they from Western Tabasco-style sauces.

12. Does this include the Mama Liz’s chilly oil?

13. Grammatically it makes sense that 紅油 ("red oil") refers to the oil while 油辣子 (lit. "oil chili") refers to the chili bits inside.

14. Hey CCD viewers, I live in Japan, not a country well known for its spice tolerance. Thus, I don't know (and adminttedly haven't search too much) where I can get a multitude of chiles. I can probably find Gochujung and Paprika and Togarashi, but does any know places to find chiles?

15. 致世界各地的杂货供应商，我们需要食用菜籽油😂 To all grocery suppliers around the world, we need Chinese cooking oil

16. Yes 菜籽油 its difficult outside china thanks for the idian mustard oil , i really like the video because it comfirms what i already find by myself in details even the 糊辣椒😂 👍🏻 by the way There is a classification system for canola oil, and if I’m not mistaken, the darker the oil, the better it is in terms of flavor

17. What about other rape seed oils? Does caiziyou taste different to rape seed oils that you can buy in europe or elsewhere?

18. 5:07 Aleppo is in Syria

19. Calabrian chillies are actually pretty hot, that’s because they are of are pretty much the same thing as thai chillies. Although they are delicious, I wouldn’t be grabbing those for fragrance

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