Chilli Mama's Szechuan Kitchen

At Chilli Mama’s, we take Chilli Oil very seriously. It’s not just that it’s in so many of our signature dishes. The flavour of Sichuanese Chilli Oil is part of what makes Chengdu cuisine so distinctive. It’s not just spicy hot. The flavour is actually mild and full of umami, the mouth satisfying taste that makes even really healthy, light dishes have a robust savoury taste.

The first step to making really good chilli oil is getting, you guessed it, really good chillis. We have a signature blend of spicy Chinese red chilli and Er jing tao chillis from Sichuan. We hand select them and make our own chilli powder, which can turn our home into an eye-watering, sneeze inducing chilli storm — but it’s worth it.

We also hand select the chillis because a lot of chilli oil makers do not, and that means you get old, mouldy, or stale chillis in the oil. Nothing but the best for our oil!

Then, we also deseed all the chillis by hand. The seeds can produce a bitterness in the oil. So, they’ve got to go. This takes a while, and if you’re not careful, wearing gloves and a mask, you can get chilli dust in the most inconvenient of places.

Then, we hand sear the chilli powder at a variety of temperatures. Part of the chilli powder goes in when the oil in our giant wok is hot enough to really shock fry it. We then patiently wait as the oil temperature comes down before introducing more of the chillis to the oil. This process is exacting, but it produces layers of flavour because not all the chillis have been cooked the same way at the same temperature.

We also do the same for white sesame seeds and walnut, to really round out the flavour. They also need to go into the oil mix at the right time and place to draw out their flavour for the best effect.

We don’t put anything else in the mix! No crazy spices or extra stuff that we pull out of the pantry. Just oil, a blend of carefully-chosen, artisan ground chillis, sesame seeds, and walnut. The result is a very traditional Sichuan chilli oil that we love.

For maximum effect though, we like our chilli oil mixed with other ingredients. We recommend, for example, putting the chilli oil with either salt or soy sauce, or sugar, or both. The flavour really pops! Or add in some sesame paste to create a thickened dipping sauce for dumplings. If you want to even turn up the heat, you can add a bit of pickled red chilli or your favourite hot sauce. What you’ll find is that the chilli oil is great by itself, but it really lifts when mixed with something sweet, salty, creamy, or extra spicy.

Enjoy it if you have it. Don’t worry — we’ll make more!

Now available in our store: https://luckymonkeyau.com/products/chilli-oil