Hey guys, some notes: 1. First off, I feel like I talk quite a bit about the flavor profiles of Sichuanese cooking but IIRC I haven't seen a full, clear list out there in English. So let's just work through this real quick - not gunna do an exhaustive discussion here, still got a recipe to write haha: (1) Mala: Chilis & Sichuan peppercorns. E.g. Hotpot, Chongqing Xiaomian noodles (2) Hongyou: Chili oil. E.g. Chuan chuan, the real Bang Bang chicken (3) Guaiwei: this one, the whole kitchen sink. (4) Suanla: Sour & Spicy... should be more sour than spicy. E.g. Suanlafen sweet potato noodles (5) Hula: "burnt chili". The Kung Pao flavor profile. A little sweet, a little spicy, a little sour. (6) Jiachang: 'homestyle' Heavy on chili bean paste. E.g. Twice cooked pork, Jiachang tofu (7) Yuxiang: fish fragrant. Pickled chili sauce, vinegar, sugar. E.g. Yuxiang pork, yuxiang eggplant (8) Paojiao: pickled chili. Kinda similar to yuxiang but way different ratios. Spicier, heavier on pickled chilis, significantly less sweet & sour. E.g. pickled chili beef (9) Lizhi: "Lychee flavor" - no lychees included. Savory, a little sweet, touch of vinegar. E.g. Beef over Guoba rice cakes. (10) Xianxian: "salty fresh". E.g. blanched veg (11) Yanxiang: smoked. Often tea or camphor. E.g. Zhangcha duck (one of my favorites) (12) Tianxiang: sweet. Dominated by honey or sugar, desserts. (13) Jiemo: mustard. Never actually tried or worked with this one. (14) Jiaoma: Uses the green Sichuan peppercorns. (15) Tiancu: Sweet & sour. (16) Xiangzao: Dominant flavor is laozao fermented rice. (17) Jiaoyan: Salt + sichuan peppercorn. Heavier on salt than peppercorns. E.g. deep-fried eggplant slices. (18) Jiangzhi: Ginger juice. Often with vegetables (19) Chenpi: Dried & aged tangerine peel. E.g. chenpi rabbit cubes (20) Wuxiang: Five spice. E.g. five spice beef (21) Suanni: Pounded garlic. Includes chili oil & soy sauce. E.g. Suanni Bairou. (22) Jiangxiang: Based around tianjiang, the Sichuan-style tianmianjiang. (23) Majiang: Sesame paste & stock (24) Xiantian: Salty & sweet. Kinda a catch-all. Salt, sugar + whatever else. 2. That was more intense than I thought it'd be. There's might be some mistakes in there... was going off memory and then gave it a quick google to fill in the cracks. Maybe one day we'll do a whole video on the topic (and actually double check stuff), though that feel like it'd be the type of thing that might be more useful in written form. So yeah, take at face value, I coulda screwed some stuff up. 3. So right, Bang Bang chicken! Dunlop writes in Land of Plenty that it's how this dish - Guaiwei shredded chicken - is referred to abroad. Which to be frank is... kinda lame. Bang Bang chicken is its *own* dish and is DEFINITELY served on the bone (thus the name). And it's a totally different flavor profile - Hongyou. Dunlop writes that they're "similar", which... I guess... though I'd say in the same way that Fish-fragrant and Kung Pao are 'similar'. But she *did* write that book a while back, and in her defense I've definitely been way wronger than that before. 4. Oh! If using a whole chicken and following the Koushuiji recipe, don't add the tumeric or chilis to the water. I didn't mention that in the video (and it's not the end of the world if you do), but... yeah.
Thank you so so much for this! I've tried to research and find info about flavour profiles in English and there's NOTHING. If you ever do find an English resource, please share it. Or if you every want to take a break from doing a recipe (don't have kitchen access or somesuch), a video just explaining flavor profiles would be so so helpful!
Omg I came here when I heard you say "24 flavor profiles in Sichuan cooking" and like a miracle you've provided a description! I, too, am food obsessed so thank you. (I only knew my Portuguese side family so I'm solid there and learned some food from Scandinavian and U.K. side as an adult. Thanks for helping so much with my learning Chinese cuisine.)
start with the sesame paste and SLOWLY add the other liquids to it. way easier to add to a paste to smooth it out than to try to break up chunks of a paste in liquid.
Yeah honestly thinking about it for a second you're obviously totally right. We were focused on getting the salt/sugar/MSG dissolved into the liquid - and we also found it was important to add the oil at the end so it doesn't emulsify. Didn't think about the order of the sesame paste, doh. So yeah the way to do it would be to mix the salt/sugar/MSG in one bowl. Once dissolved slowly add that mixture to the sesame paste. Add everything else, oils at the end. Will write that in the recipe/Reddit post.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified tried both ways and it makes sense to dissolve the sugar and salt in liquids which can be then added to the sesame paste. My sugar and salt had bigger crystals and it was easier to dissolve in liquids than in the paste. Because the original chinese paste was unavailable and i had some tahini on my hands i would recommend adjusting the amount of oil after mixing liquids with the sesame paste, that is because my tahini was rather coarse and not very smooth. Oraybe try adding some of the poaching liquid... Anyway, thanks for the recipe and good luck to everyone with their attempts.
You seem to have a solution to a problem that doesn’t exit. Because it wasn’t “way hard” to begin with. You’re just being opinionated about your cooking. Let the man mix his sesame paste when and where he wants to, even if it takes an extra five seconds and burns and extra five calories.
@@zacknicley8150 i just nicely offered up some advice, having run into similar issues as an executive chef. dude understood, dont know why your twisted over it.
@@zacknicley8150 I love how he literally agreed with them and started a conversation about the easiest way to mix the ingredients, TWO YEARS ago might I add, and you're just absolutely FUMING that someone has an opinion on a simple technique for something mundane. Like goddamn dude lol maybe get some therapy for that anger, you're getting mad at someone for "being opinionated" when in reality they were having a friendly conversation with a content creator and YOU got angry and opinionated that someone dare have the audacity to have a pleasant conversation on the internet. Again, two years ago. Wow.
You say blasphemy, I say "American food." In case that sounded sarcastic: I wholeheartedly approve, that sort of cultural blending is why I'm happy to be alive right now.
Guys, I am long time subscriber, never commented, but I like your videos and recipes, I've seen them all I think, but today I made this one for lunch using shredded pickled cabbage like a base...God, it's just DELICIOUS!!! And it's healthy too. So thank you for this recipe and greetings from Italy 😘
MSG is absolutely essential. To those asking why you want to do that with a sauce over chicken (are you worrying that your chicken is not flavourful enough?), the answer is that the flavour needs to be there in the sauce before you chew on the chicken. So the two sensations or hits before and after you chew are differentiated. A lot of Sichuan cooking is about having numerous subtleties under a seemingly overwhelmingly strong influence (e.g. spiciness), or, as in this case, layers of sensations in a seemingly chaotic mix of flavours. Strange :)
MSG is very important to balance the heat from dried chilis. When I cook for myself (i.e. not researching things for the channel) I like fish sauce with fresh chilis and MSG with dried. But one way or another you need to balance the heat.
Is there an automatic one "dislike" for every video? I don't get it. Who could dislike~this? I haven't even watched it yet. And I know I'll love it. Silliness I say~silliness is afoot. ☺ Jenn 💖
Haha yeah there seems to be one person out there that subscribed and hit the notification bell... just so that they could come and thumbs down. It's the internet, some weird people out there. That kind of behavior's actually paradoxically good for TH-cam metrics though (high engagement), so we're not sweating it. (Note: if you ever hate something on TH-cam, just ignore it)
I’ve made this with both chicken and (much longer cooked) lamb both were amazing! More scallion and vinegar for the lamb, but the most versatile recipe I’ve come across in ages
Hey there, you guys! I love this recipe so much and I've never seen and try this from China before but hope it tastes so good. Well, keep it up, love this channel. 😉
I actually learned a mistranslated variant of this dish called Bang-bang chicken from a Japanese website. It had very muted flavors and went very heavy on the sesame paste to please the Japanese palette but I've been hooked from day one. I'M SO HAPPY YOU SHARED THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THIS DISH. I've been looking everyone for a more true to life non-westernized version of this but needless to say"bang bang chicken" was not producing the desired results, now I know the true name of this dish and can make it in all it's full flavor profiled glory. Thank you so much for sharing, I bet this will be a new favorite for me over rice and veg.
This would make a great summer dish when you don't want to heat up the house. We buy chicken in bulk and then velvet and freeze it for later use. All we would have to do is thaw and reheat the chicken and blanch the bean sprouts. Very little heat. Nice! I tend to gravitate toward slow cookers for the summer so this is a VERY nice alternative to keep on hand for hot days!
Hey guys. I got somehow addicted to your channel. I like Chinese cooking so much! I would be very happy to have some more vegan or at least vegetable based dishes on your channel. I am not a vegan, but at least I am trying to reduce the amount of meat I eat a lot. For all the good reasons. Nevertheless the next thing I gonna try is that fresh fish, oh my god. Greetings from Saxony!
So the way Chinese eat can be pretty meat light. For example, you can make a meat dish (it can be small), and fry a vegetable, then serve two-three people with rice, that's a pretty meat light meal here. I think if you want to reduce the meat consumption, this way of constructing a meal can be an easy start.
Great video, thanks for bringing this to everyone s attention. A very cool and refreshing dish, especially when served cold or even chilled during sichuanese (too) hot summer. Thumbs up.
Man I just got back from China yesterday, and now I have a craving to go back through all your library and start going at it! Side request: could you guys do some more northern stuff? Chillies are somehow really annoying to source around here.
Yeah we definitely want to, it's just our sources for it aren't as good. We can make 'northern dishes as you'd eat them in Shenzhen', but we generally aim our standard nowadays to be more 'northern dishes as you'd eat them at an awesome restaurant in Beijing'. We're picking some more stuff up and we'll definitely get there, but yeah. Cantonese (Steph's from Guangzhou) and Sichuanese (got Sichuan friends and Sichuan food's what Shenzhen does the best) are always the easiest for us to research and do proper.
Next dish, huangmenji please. I've tried it before in a restaurant and I love it! The soup was very fragrant and have a lot of spices, I drank it until it's gone 😅
Good idea~ I do like some huangmenji. Although I like the Sichuan/Yunnan versions, the popular one throughout China is the Shandong version. If we do it we may need to visit both, lol.
MSG is such a key ingredient for balancing the heat of dried chilis. I know the anti-MSG crowd'll scream 'what about fish sauce?!?'... and I *do* enjoy fish sauce with fresh chilis & in braises ... but for this kind of dish MSG is *the* ingredient.
ok... now i know what this is! i had this (or something similar) at a friend's house like 30yrs ago and never had it since. it about KILLED ME! but i loved it. they made it w/ shredded beef and pork though and served it on top of some sort of rice cake that i've never had since either
@@ChineseCookingDemystified I just realized, Lao Gan Ma is a whole range of products. The one I had in mind is the chili crisp stuff. Is that the chili oil or does it count as something else? Either way it's great stuff.
@@jeremiahmiller6431 The chili crisp stuff is a mixture of chili oil and some other stuff (tofu, peanut, fermented soybeans), but you can totally use it as a chili oil. It can be used in stir-fries (like fried rice/noodle/vegetable/meat) or as a sauce that you can put on everything. The classic dish that uses it in Guizhou is a cold rice/pea jello. In fact, Lao Gan Ma first started as a small stall by the highway that sells this kind of rice/pea jello, and because her sauce is so awesome that it got popular and she started to focus on it later. And then, it is the story we all know, Lao Gan Ma taking over the world~
My daughter and I both thought this looked delicious...will make this weekend. So I understand, this is normally served room temp? And with warm rice? Thanks - made your tofu with dried shrimp tonight - excellent!
Hey guys I'm just wondering(!) what kind of chopsticks are those?? A fantastic authentic Chinese place opened up near me, and they have the exact same ones, which seem incredibly awesome when I used them. I'd love a pair for myself but I haven't had any luck identifying them, so any help would be great! thanks
I got our chopsticks from Thailand, they'are made with coconut shells. And our other chopsticks are from IKEA, nothing fancy, really. So I'm not sure which ones you're talking about, we use both types in the videos~
We add clips here and there. It's just kinda hard because our current local market is the wholesale market for restaurants in this district. It's awesome because it's SO vast, but also tough to make a video for for the same reason.
Would it make sense to turn the poaching liquid into a basic homestyle stock as well? Maybe throw the stripped chicken bones back in for a few more hours of simmering, along with whatever other meat scraps are needed to fill it out?
um is your toasted sesame oil a different variety or something? Usually whenever I've used sesame oil a few drops to a quarter teaspoon are enough. Anymore than that completely overpowers my dishes with sesame.
Just to cover the bases real quick - what brand you use? Last time I was in the USA I tried a Western brand of toasted sesame oil at my brother's house. It was... surprisingly garbage. Had this sort of burnt, musky, chemically off taste. Toasted sesame oil should have a distinctly bolder, richer taste than like a cooked natural peanut oil would but not... significantly so? Like, I often finish dishes with ~1/2tsp to 1 tsp. That said, you're right that this is quite a bit of toasted sesame oil. If you were making a lighter dish, you definitely wouldn't want this quantity. But because we already have chili oil, Sichuan peppercorn, a bunch of sugar, a bunch of vinegar, a very noticeable quantity of MSG... it all works together. There's a phrase that I've heard applied to strategy/RPG game design - "if everything is unbalanced, then nothing is unbalanced". That's kind of the idea of this flavor profile here.
Possibly, just like olive oil which can range from bitter and tannic to needing a lot to actually taste like olive oil. It might also just be meant to really clash with the other strong flavours in the sauce.
It's similar in ingredients but the ratios make it way different. Most obviously, this's much more sour/nutty. If you're familiar with Dan Dan noodles, give this one a go and I think you'll be able to see the discrepancies :)
i vant help but notice this would go realy well with the chicken or duck used in making stock. of course it will be a bit drier but i thing the sause easily makes up for this also even if you do it like this i think the poaching liquid will already make a good basic stock or am i wrong
Really is too bad that a lot of the dishes that you guys make aren't available and any Chinese restaurant I've ever been too , all we get is the dumbed down north American dishes we've all grown bored with . Keep up the good work .
They make a lot of Sichuan food on this channel, so go to a Sichuan restaurant. A lot of the dishes though are 'home cooked' dishes rather than restaurant food, so you wouldn't be able to find it even in restaurants in China. Also, maybe don't disrespect the food made by Chinese diaspora. It's Chinese food, just a different type of Chinese food.
Hmm so 浙醋's red vinegar... you might be thinking about 香醋 - i.e. Chinkiang? So there's two major 'dark vinegar's: (1) Chinkiang/Zhenjiang (香醋) and (2) Mature vinegar/Shanxi vinegar (陈醋). The latter's got a sharper acidity and the former's a bit more complex (though I personally usually like to reach for the latter). So if the two types are different, why the 'dark Chinese vinegar' in the narration? Because honestly... while I'm sure there'd be people that would intensely disagree with us, we think that they can be more or less interchangeable for most uses (but not all! if it's a super vinegar-heavy dish you need the right one). In Sichuan they generally use mature vinegar (and as such would use it in this dish), but in the video we actually opted for Chinkiang/Zhenjiang because we were flush out of mature vinegar on filming day & didn't feel like going out and buying some.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Hmmm, doing a bit more research and now I'm not sure what kind of vinegar I was thinking about. It's the one they served as Dim Sum dipping. I came up with 浙醋 when I did a simple search for Chinese characters of the Thai word for that kind of vinegar which could be easily found here . The tricky part was the Thai word didn't come from Mandarin as majority of Chinese people in Thailand are Chaozhou and Hakka Chinese so I had to guess if it was the same thing and Zhecu sounded like it could become the word Zigcou in Chaozhou dialect. So bottom line I'm not sure if it's 浙醋 but it's the kind served with Dim Sum. Probably that's not a possible substitute, I guess? Could a mixture of white soy sauce and white vinegar be a sub then?
If it's dark it's probably Chinkiang/Zhenjiang, IIRC that's what's dominant in Southeast Asia. So you should be totally good to use that, but if you want to double check you can shoot over the word for it in Thai. We should be able to tell with a quick Google image search
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Thanks a lot! The Thai word is จิ๊กโฉ่ว. I also tried doing more search and found a clear picture of one of the old brand with clear Hanzi: img.kaidee.com/prd/20180821/340945561/b/a0530824-c19c-4258-8595-d515206362f8.jpg Another very old brand is: f.ptcdn.info/047/018/000/1398073520-IMG0663-o.jpg
IMHO Tahini is made out of unroasted sesame, while Majiang (the Chinese version) is roasted. No idea if it's possible to fry tahini, to get roast sesame flavor.
Yes, it would totally go with shrimp or beef. For shrimp, I think a quick blanching would do. For beef, it usually uses the beef that's slow-cooked from a master stock. But that's another whole process. So if you're using beef, you can do a plainish roast beef, slice it up and toss it with the sauce~
Watching all these Chinese cooking videos has made me a way better cook in multiple types of cuisine. The systemic way Chinese cooking approaches food is amazing. Almost everything has an order and reason to it that extracts maximum flavor with minimal waste. I also love the many types of flavor profiles that I think are lacking in English language and are far removed from the American thought processes of tasting food.
Need the umami component. If you can't eat MSG for whatever reason, use the nicest quality soy sauce you can get your hands on and add a dash of fish sauce. Not totally the same but would work in a pinch. If often making Sichuan food though you might want to look into autolyzed yeast extract as an MSG substitute.
So sorry you can't eat MSG. If you truly are one of the 1% that is sensitive to MSG, then you probably can't eat anything with soy or oyster sauce, mushrooms, tomatoes, Parmesan or Roquefort cheese, walnuts, or cured ham, since they all have loads of natural MSG in them. That would be so sad not to be able to enjoy those things. Personally, I find MSG delicious and sprinkle it in lots of food I cook.
@@scottr939 be more clear of what you listed down. Does fresh mushrooms and tomatoes contains msg??? Go back and read the last sentence of what I said.
@@margaux6339 Yes, mushrooms and tomatoes have lots of natural MSG in them. You said MSG is 'not your friend' - maybe could have clarified more what you meant by that - but it seems like you were claiming a typical 'sensitivity' to MSG - which in reality is extremely rare - so my comment was asking if you have issues with eating other foods with glutamates in them. Adding extra MSG into foods is like adding additional salt or sugar or acid - even if the core ingredients may already have some in it, a good chef decides if they want to add a bit more to boost a flavor note , in this case 'umami', to balance the profile. Just like some people like more salt/pepper, some like more umami. If you don't like a recipe that represents a traditional profile, then you can always make whatever you want instead, but to suggest the chef definitively added something 'unnecessary' is an insult to their tastes and skills and is really just about claiming your personal preference as the only 'right' one.
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Hey guys, some notes:
1. First off, I feel like I talk quite a bit about the flavor profiles of Sichuanese cooking but IIRC I haven't seen a full, clear list out there in English. So let's just work through this real quick - not gunna do an exhaustive discussion here, still got a recipe to write haha:
(1) Mala: Chilis & Sichuan peppercorns. E.g. Hotpot, Chongqing Xiaomian noodles
(2) Hongyou: Chili oil. E.g. Chuan chuan, the real Bang Bang chicken
(3) Guaiwei: this one, the whole kitchen sink.
(4) Suanla: Sour & Spicy... should be more sour than spicy. E.g. Suanlafen sweet potato noodles
(5) Hula: "burnt chili". The Kung Pao flavor profile. A little sweet, a little spicy, a little sour.
(6) Jiachang: 'homestyle' Heavy on chili bean paste. E.g. Twice cooked pork, Jiachang tofu
(7) Yuxiang: fish fragrant. Pickled chili sauce, vinegar, sugar. E.g. Yuxiang pork, yuxiang eggplant
(8) Paojiao: pickled chili. Kinda similar to yuxiang but way different ratios. Spicier, heavier on pickled chilis, significantly less sweet & sour. E.g. pickled chili beef
(9) Lizhi: "Lychee flavor" - no lychees included. Savory, a little sweet, touch of vinegar. E.g. Beef over Guoba rice cakes.
(10) Xianxian: "salty fresh". E.g. blanched veg
(11) Yanxiang: smoked. Often tea or camphor. E.g. Zhangcha duck (one of my favorites)
(12) Tianxiang: sweet. Dominated by honey or sugar, desserts.
(13) Jiemo: mustard. Never actually tried or worked with this one.
(14) Jiaoma: Uses the green Sichuan peppercorns.
(15) Tiancu: Sweet & sour.
(16) Xiangzao: Dominant flavor is laozao fermented rice.
(17) Jiaoyan: Salt + sichuan peppercorn. Heavier on salt than peppercorns. E.g. deep-fried eggplant slices.
(18) Jiangzhi: Ginger juice. Often with vegetables
(19) Chenpi: Dried & aged tangerine peel. E.g. chenpi rabbit cubes
(20) Wuxiang: Five spice. E.g. five spice beef
(21) Suanni: Pounded garlic. Includes chili oil & soy sauce. E.g. Suanni Bairou.
(22) Jiangxiang: Based around tianjiang, the Sichuan-style tianmianjiang.
(23) Majiang: Sesame paste & stock
(24) Xiantian: Salty & sweet. Kinda a catch-all. Salt, sugar + whatever else.
2. That was more intense than I thought it'd be. There's might be some mistakes in there... was going off memory and then gave it a quick google to fill in the cracks. Maybe one day we'll do a whole video on the topic (and actually double check stuff), though that feel like it'd be the type of thing that might be more useful in written form. So yeah, take at face value, I coulda screwed some stuff up.
3. So right, Bang Bang chicken! Dunlop writes in Land of Plenty that it's how this dish - Guaiwei shredded chicken - is referred to abroad. Which to be frank is... kinda lame. Bang Bang chicken is its *own* dish and is DEFINITELY served on the bone (thus the name). And it's a totally different flavor profile - Hongyou. Dunlop writes that they're "similar", which... I guess... though I'd say in the same way that Fish-fragrant and Kung Pao are 'similar'. But she *did* write that book a while back, and in her defense I've definitely been way wronger than that before.
4. Oh! If using a whole chicken and following the Koushuiji recipe, don't add the tumeric or chilis to the water. I didn't mention that in the video (and it's not the end of the world if you do), but... yeah.
Thank you so so much for this! I've tried to research and find info about flavour profiles in English and there's NOTHING. If you ever do find an English resource, please share it. Or if you every want to take a break from doing a recipe (don't have kitchen access or somesuch), a video just explaining flavor profiles would be so so helpful!
Omg I came here when I heard you say "24 flavor profiles in Sichuan cooking" and like a miracle you've provided a description! I, too, am food obsessed so thank you. (I only knew my Portuguese side family so I'm solid there and learned some food from Scandinavian and U.K. side as an adult. Thanks for helping so much with my learning Chinese cuisine.)
May make jellyfish salad?
Do you have a recipe for 牛腩面? It's one of my favourite foods, please make a recipe if you haven't already! 😊
Chinese Cooking Demystified, thanks for those descriptions. Now I’ll be more in the “know” when I’m ordering my food.
start with the sesame paste and SLOWLY add the other liquids to it. way easier to add to a paste to smooth it out than to try to break up chunks of a paste in liquid.
Yeah honestly thinking about it for a second you're obviously totally right. We were focused on getting the salt/sugar/MSG dissolved into the liquid - and we also found it was important to add the oil at the end so it doesn't emulsify. Didn't think about the order of the sesame paste, doh.
So yeah the way to do it would be to mix the salt/sugar/MSG in one bowl. Once dissolved slowly add that mixture to the sesame paste. Add everything else, oils at the end. Will write that in the recipe/Reddit post.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified tried both ways and it makes sense to dissolve the sugar and salt in liquids which can be then added to the sesame paste. My sugar and salt had bigger crystals and it was easier to dissolve in liquids than in the paste. Because the original chinese paste was unavailable and i had some tahini on my hands i would recommend adjusting the amount of oil after mixing liquids with the sesame paste, that is because my tahini was rather coarse and not very smooth. Oraybe try adding some of the poaching liquid... Anyway, thanks for the recipe and good luck to everyone with their attempts.
You seem to have a solution to a problem that doesn’t exit. Because it wasn’t “way hard” to begin with. You’re just being opinionated about your cooking. Let the man mix his sesame paste when and where he wants to, even if it takes an extra five seconds and burns and extra five calories.
@@zacknicley8150 i just nicely offered up some advice, having run into similar issues as an executive chef. dude understood, dont know why your twisted over it.
@@zacknicley8150 I love how he literally agreed with them and started a conversation about the easiest way to mix the ingredients, TWO YEARS ago might I add, and you're just absolutely FUMING that someone has an opinion on a simple technique for something mundane. Like goddamn dude lol maybe get some therapy for that anger, you're getting mad at someone for "being opinionated" when in reality they were having a friendly conversation with a content creator and YOU got angry and opinionated that someone dare have the audacity to have a pleasant conversation on the internet. Again, two years ago. Wow.
Huh. I actually have all of the ingredients for this already. Y'all have really made my spice cabinet very... strange.
Yeah, i was like, I CAN DO THIS ONE!
Just got done eating; can't believe I'm already watching a cooking video. Only this channel can make a full man hungry.
I used the sauce to make a pulled chicken and eat it with flour tortilla. Blasphemy maybe but it is great.
Sounds good, I mean that is a pretty versatile sauce.
It's only blasphemy if you claim the use was traditional! Otherwise you're just cooking
You say blasphemy, I say "American food."
In case that sounded sarcastic: I wholeheartedly approve, that sort of cultural blending is why I'm happy to be alive right now.
We all eat the same food but with different ingredients i.e. you made a raw egg roll ?
@@johnpick8336 Surely it rolls just like a cooked egg, but messier if it cracks?
Guys, I am long time subscriber, never commented, but I like your videos and recipes, I've seen them all I think, but today I made this one for lunch using shredded pickled cabbage like a base...God, it's just DELICIOUS!!! And it's healthy too. So thank you for this recipe and greetings from Italy 😘
MSG is absolutely essential. To those asking why you want to do that with a sauce over chicken (are you worrying that your chicken is not flavourful enough?), the answer is that the flavour needs to be there in the sauce before you chew on the chicken. So the two sensations or hits before and after you chew are differentiated. A lot of Sichuan cooking is about having numerous subtleties under a seemingly overwhelmingly strong influence (e.g. spiciness), or, as in this case, layers of sensations in a seemingly chaotic mix of flavours. Strange :)
MSG is very important to balance the heat from dried chilis. When I cook for myself (i.e. not researching things for the channel) I like fish sauce with fresh chilis and MSG with dried. But one way or another you need to balance the heat.
Is there an automatic one "dislike" for every video? I don't get it. Who could dislike~this? I haven't even watched it yet. And I know I'll love it.
Silliness I say~silliness is afoot. ☺
Jenn 💖
Haha yeah there seems to be one person out there that subscribed and hit the notification bell... just so that they could come and thumbs down. It's the internet, some weird people out there. That kind of behavior's actually paradoxically good for TH-cam metrics though (high engagement), so we're not sweating it.
(Note: if you ever hate something on TH-cam, just ignore it)
I just love that you used “afoot”, it’s not used nearly enough....But yeah, some party pooper always has to hate. Boo for that sad soul.
I’ve made this with both chicken and (much longer cooked) lamb both were amazing! More scallion and vinegar for the lamb, but the most versatile recipe I’ve come across in ages
Hey there, you guys! I love this recipe so much and I've never seen and try this from China before but hope it tastes so good. Well, keep it up, love this channel. 😉
Hmm, I gotta run this past my Szechuan sister-in-law and see how she makes it. Great demo, as always 😁
There's a restaurant in china town boston that sold it as "amazing chicken" on the english menu.
I actually learned a mistranslated variant of this dish called Bang-bang chicken from a Japanese website. It had very muted flavors and went very heavy on the sesame paste to please the Japanese palette but I've been hooked from day one. I'M SO HAPPY YOU SHARED THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THIS DISH.
I've been looking everyone for a more true to life non-westernized version of this but needless to say"bang bang chicken" was not producing the desired results, now I know the true name of this dish and can make it in all it's full flavor profiled glory. Thank you so much for sharing, I bet this will be a new favorite for me over rice and veg.
This would make a great summer dish when you don't want to heat up the house. We buy chicken in bulk and then velvet and freeze it for later use. All we would have to do is thaw and reheat the chicken and blanch the bean sprouts. Very little heat. Nice! I tend to gravitate toward slow cookers for the summer so this is a VERY nice alternative to keep on hand for hot days!
When mixing a sauce, add all the pastes first, then add liquids as you stir. This will make sure the paste is dissolved.
Hey guys. I got somehow addicted to your channel. I like Chinese cooking so much! I would be very happy to have some more vegan or at least vegetable based dishes on your channel. I am not a vegan, but at least I am trying to reduce the amount of meat I eat a lot. For all the good reasons.
Nevertheless the next thing I gonna try is that fresh fish, oh my god. Greetings from Saxony!
So the way Chinese eat can be pretty meat light. For example, you can make a meat dish (it can be small), and fry a vegetable, then serve two-three people with rice, that's a pretty meat light meal here. I think if you want to reduce the meat consumption, this way of constructing a meal can be an easy start.
Great video, thanks for bringing this to everyone s attention. A very cool and refreshing dish, especially when served cold or even chilled during sichuanese (too) hot summer. Thumbs up.
Man I just got back from China yesterday, and now I have a craving to go back through all your library and start going at it!
Side request: could you guys do some more northern stuff? Chillies are somehow really annoying to source around here.
Yeah we definitely want to, it's just our sources for it aren't as good. We can make 'northern dishes as you'd eat them in Shenzhen', but we generally aim our standard nowadays to be more 'northern dishes as you'd eat them at an awesome restaurant in Beijing'.
We're picking some more stuff up and we'll definitely get there, but yeah. Cantonese (Steph's from Guangzhou) and Sichuanese (got Sichuan friends and Sichuan food's what Shenzhen does the best) are always the easiest for us to research and do proper.
One of my fav channel, hands down!
Now that is a dish for Dr Strange
I finally got around to making this. Absolutely delicious. I'd never heard of it before.
Wow the flavour profile really is strange! I want to try this now
Next dish, huangmenji please. I've tried it before in a restaurant and I love it! The soup was very fragrant and have a lot of spices, I drank it until it's gone 😅
Good idea~ I do like some huangmenji. Although I like the Sichuan/Yunnan versions, the popular one throughout China is the Shandong version. If we do it we may need to visit both, lol.
Leftover chicken. Made this tonight after a few beers. My god. Remember that scene in the Matrix where Neo can see the world in code? Praise MSG.
MSG is such a key ingredient for balancing the heat of dried chilis. I know the anti-MSG crowd'll scream 'what about fish sauce?!?'... and I *do* enjoy fish sauce with fresh chilis & in braises ... but for this kind of dish MSG is *the* ingredient.
a restaurant in my city serves this sauce over burrata. it's delicious.
"One of 24 core flavour profiles" I had to laugh.
I am committed to making this. It looks amazing
Nice, let us know how you like it.
oh my god I want this. I want my mouth to be taken to new heights.
The big plant on your left wanted to speak : ) (As always, great recipe!!!)
ok... now i know what this is! i had this (or something similar) at a friend's house like 30yrs ago and never had it since. it about KILLED ME! but i loved it. they made it w/ shredded beef and pork though and served it on top of some sort of rice cake that i've never had since either
This is my favourite Chinese dish.
That's very similar to my go-to home made stir fry sauce. Interesting.
please dont forget to water the plant now that you guys changed the water tap
No worries, I water them every other day.
Made it on the bone it's great! With shredded chicken, I'm going to try it on cold noodles with some veg.
Great channel! 👍👍
Can we get a recipe featuring Lao Gan Ma as a primary ingredient? I love Angry Lady Sauce and would appreciate more delicious uses for it.
So Laoganma's actually a Guizhou-style chili oil - I think that's definitely an area we should cover. Lots of great food out that way too.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified I just realized, Lao Gan Ma is a whole range of products. The one I had in mind is the chili crisp stuff. Is that the chili oil or does it count as something else? Either way it's great stuff.
@@jeremiahmiller6431 The chili crisp stuff is a mixture of chili oil and some other stuff (tofu, peanut, fermented soybeans), but you can totally use it as a chili oil. It can be used in stir-fries (like fried rice/noodle/vegetable/meat) or as a sauce that you can put on everything.
The classic dish that uses it in Guizhou is a cold rice/pea jello. In fact, Lao Gan Ma first started as a small stall by the highway that sells this kind of rice/pea jello, and because her sauce is so awesome that it got popular and she started to focus on it later. And then, it is the story we all know, Lao Gan Ma taking over the world~
dumb question about Liaoju , In the US we only the salted cooking Chinese wines , is that the same kind you are using?
they really done called this shit odd, quirky even
...I think I use all those condiments save the MSG over noodles. Good to know I'm not standing alone out in left field.
My daughter and I both thought this looked delicious...will make this weekend. So I understand, this is normally served room temp? And with warm rice? Thanks - made your tofu with dried shrimp tonight - excellent!
Yep, room temp :)
Chinese Cooking Demystified thanks!
That new faucet
Hey guys I'm just wondering(!) what kind of chopsticks are those?? A fantastic authentic Chinese place opened up near me, and they have the exact same ones, which seem incredibly awesome when I used them. I'd love a pair for myself but I haven't had any luck identifying them, so any help would be great! thanks
I got our chopsticks from Thailand, they'are made with coconut shells. And our other chopsticks are from IKEA, nothing fancy, really. So I'm not sure which ones you're talking about, we use both types in the videos~
This is Steph. I think they must be the thai coconut ones! I never would have guessed haha, but now I can begin my search. Thanks!! ^_^
This will seem odd , but i would love to see you guys do a local market video.
We add clips here and there. It's just kinda hard because our current local market is the wholesale market for restaurants in this district. It's awesome because it's SO vast, but also tough to make a video for for the same reason.
Would it make sense to turn the poaching liquid into a basic homestyle stock as well? Maybe throw the stripped chicken bones back in for a few more hours of simmering, along with whatever other meat scraps are needed to fill it out?
Yeah that totally makes sense to me, go for it!
Looks totally doable, gotta try this one.
um is your toasted sesame oil a different variety or something? Usually whenever I've used sesame oil a few drops to a quarter teaspoon are enough. Anymore than that completely overpowers my dishes with sesame.
Just to cover the bases real quick - what brand you use? Last time I was in the USA I tried a Western brand of toasted sesame oil at my brother's house. It was... surprisingly garbage. Had this sort of burnt, musky, chemically off taste. Toasted sesame oil should have a distinctly bolder, richer taste than like a cooked natural peanut oil would but not... significantly so? Like, I often finish dishes with ~1/2tsp to 1 tsp.
That said, you're right that this is quite a bit of toasted sesame oil. If you were making a lighter dish, you definitely wouldn't want this quantity. But because we already have chili oil, Sichuan peppercorn, a bunch of sugar, a bunch of vinegar, a very noticeable quantity of MSG... it all works together.
There's a phrase that I've heard applied to strategy/RPG game design - "if everything is unbalanced, then nothing is unbalanced". That's kind of the idea of this flavor profile here.
Possibly, just like olive oil which can range from bitter and tannic to needing a lot to actually taste like olive oil. It might also just be meant to really clash with the other strong flavours in the sauce.
Why do you mention that there's no skipping MSG? Are there actually people out there that do not like that stuff?
Would you say this flavor profile is similar to dandan noodles? Ingredients seem to be about the same excluding the proteins and pickled veg.
It's similar in ingredients but the ratios make it way different. Most obviously, this's much more sour/nutty. If you're familiar with Dan Dan noodles, give this one a go and I think you'll be able to see the discrepancies :)
just one question: cookbook - when? (My Fuchsia Dunlop sichuan cookery is starting to fall apart :) )
that should be terrific with tofu
i vant help but notice this would go realy well with the chicken or duck used in making stock. of course it will be a bit drier but i thing the sause easily makes up for this
also even if you do it like this i think the poaching liquid will already make a good basic stock
or am i wrong
WOW! Just WOW!
Jenn 💖
Really is too bad that a lot of the dishes that you guys make aren't available and any Chinese restaurant I've ever been too , all we get is the dumbed down north American dishes we've all grown bored with . Keep up the good work .
They make a lot of Sichuan food on this channel, so go to a Sichuan restaurant. A lot of the dishes though are 'home cooked' dishes rather than restaurant food, so you wouldn't be able to find it even in restaurants in China.
Also, maybe don't disrespect the food made by Chinese diaspora. It's Chinese food, just a different type of Chinese food.
Looks good
Strange flavour? Sounds interesting. By sesame paste, is it sesame pounded into paste? Also, is black vinegar the same as 浙醋?
Hmm so 浙醋's red vinegar... you might be thinking about 香醋 - i.e. Chinkiang?
So there's two major 'dark vinegar's: (1) Chinkiang/Zhenjiang (香醋) and (2) Mature vinegar/Shanxi vinegar (陈醋). The latter's got a sharper acidity and the former's a bit more complex (though I personally usually like to reach for the latter).
So if the two types are different, why the 'dark Chinese vinegar' in the narration? Because honestly... while I'm sure there'd be people that would intensely disagree with us, we think that they can be more or less interchangeable for most uses (but not all! if it's a super vinegar-heavy dish you need the right one).
In Sichuan they generally use mature vinegar (and as such would use it in this dish), but in the video we actually opted for Chinkiang/Zhenjiang because we were flush out of mature vinegar on filming day & didn't feel like going out and buying some.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Hmmm, doing a bit more research and now I'm not sure what kind of vinegar I was thinking about. It's the one they served as Dim Sum dipping. I came up with 浙醋 when I did a simple search for Chinese characters of the Thai word for that kind of vinegar which could be easily found here . The tricky part was the Thai word didn't come from Mandarin as majority of Chinese people in Thailand are Chaozhou and Hakka Chinese so I had to guess if it was the same thing and Zhecu sounded like it could become the word Zigcou in Chaozhou dialect. So bottom line I'm not sure if it's 浙醋 but it's the kind served with Dim Sum. Probably that's not a possible substitute, I guess? Could a mixture of white soy sauce and white vinegar be a sub then?
If it's dark it's probably Chinkiang/Zhenjiang, IIRC that's what's dominant in Southeast Asia. So you should be totally good to use that, but if you want to double check you can shoot over the word for it in Thai. We should be able to tell with a quick Google image search
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Thanks a lot! The Thai word is จิ๊กโฉ่ว. I also tried doing more search and found a clear picture of one of the old brand with clear Hanzi:
img.kaidee.com/prd/20180821/340945561/b/a0530824-c19c-4258-8595-d515206362f8.jpg
Another very old brand is:
f.ptcdn.info/047/018/000/1398073520-IMG0663-o.jpg
I totally use the western fork shredding style instead of the eastern hand picking style. Actually Bruce Lee thought me this 😎
No salt in the water when poaching?
shredded seitan would seem great
Nice, I bet it's delicious
So is this dish supposed to be served cold? Or did I miss a step lol
It hits with rice ong
IMHO Tahini is made out of unroasted sesame, while Majiang (the Chinese version) is roasted. No idea if it's possible to fry tahini, to get roast sesame flavor.
The reddit links to the written recipes dont seem to work anymore?
this looking just like my hot pot sauce mix lol
would this go well with shrimp or beef? i gotta try this soon lol
Yes, it would totally go with shrimp or beef. For shrimp, I think a quick blanching would do. For beef, it usually uses the beef that's slow-cooked from a master stock. But that's another whole process. So if you're using beef, you can do a plainish roast beef, slice it up and toss it with the sauce~
That chicken is fine.
Are there any authentic recipes that don't start with 50% chili oil and Sichuan peppercorns?
Yes, there're. For example, this one, also a Sichuan classic: th-cam.com/video/LT8rqWB45is/w-d-xo.html
Yuuuuum🤤😛Sichuan food is amazing🥲
👌👌
Holy F$%# this looks amazing. Making tomorrow
how was it
@@elirockenbeck6922 Very good!
Can you show us who cook is?
Watching all these Chinese cooking videos has made me a way better cook in multiple types of cuisine. The systemic way Chinese cooking approaches food is amazing. Almost everything has an order and reason to it that extracts maximum flavor with minimal waste. I also love the many types of flavor profiles that I think are lacking in English language and are far removed from the American thought processes of tasting food.
🤤
😇
Yeah looks like I first need to invent the universe to make this dish
Very authentic with the added MSG LOL
It's funny cause "strange" is a euphamism for sex.
Jesus Christ is Lord
Too bad, msg is not my friend. All the flavors combined is just flavorful without msg.
Need the umami component. If you can't eat MSG for whatever reason, use the nicest quality soy sauce you can get your hands on and add a dash of fish sauce. Not totally the same but would work in a pinch. If often making Sichuan food though you might want to look into autolyzed yeast extract as an MSG substitute.
So sorry you can't eat MSG. If you truly are one of the 1% that is sensitive to MSG, then you probably can't eat anything with soy or oyster sauce, mushrooms, tomatoes, Parmesan or Roquefort cheese, walnuts, or cured ham, since they all have loads of natural MSG in them. That would be so sad not to be able to enjoy those things. Personally, I find MSG delicious and sprinkle it in lots of food I cook.
@@scottr939 be more clear of what you listed down. Does fresh mushrooms and tomatoes contains msg??? Go back and read the last sentence of what I said.
@@margaux6339 Yes, mushrooms and tomatoes have lots of natural MSG in them. You said MSG is 'not your friend' - maybe could have clarified more what you meant by that - but it seems like you were claiming a typical 'sensitivity' to MSG - which in reality is extremely rare - so my comment was asking if you have issues with eating other foods with glutamates in them. Adding extra MSG into foods is like adding additional salt or sugar or acid - even if the core ingredients may already have some in it, a good chef decides if they want to add a bit more to boost a flavor note , in this case 'umami', to balance the profile. Just like some people like more salt/pepper, some like more umami. If you don't like a recipe that represents a traditional profile, then you can always make whatever you want instead, but to suggest the chef definitively added something 'unnecessary' is an insult to their tastes and skills and is really just about claiming your personal preference as the only 'right' one.
Thank you for your info, I never knew that. I guess what I meant is man made msg in canister or little containers.