All the things you can do with Sichuan pepper
I cook so much Chinese food that someone recently called me an upside-down Twinkie: white on the outside, yellow on the inside. The greatest compliment I’ve ever received. So I always have a bag of Sichuan peppercorns in the cupboard, but you can do so much more with them than cook Chinese dishes.
Sichuan pepper is widely used in the Chinese province of Sichuan, and actually it isn’t pepper at all. It’s a dried spice that comes from a flowering plant (the zanthoxylum, in case you were wondering). Its shape does resemble that of pepper, and it’s quite spicy, but not in the way you’re used to from wasabi or chili peppers. The ‘pepper’ tastes floral and a little like anise, and when you bite into a peppercorn, your entire mouth goes numb. Yet once you get started, you can’t stop eating it.
How do you use Sichuan pepper?
You can add the peppercorns whole to dishes. Just put them in the pan when frying ginger and garlic, or let them infuse in a sauce. If you leave them whole, there is a chance that one will get stuck between your teeth. Not a big deal; you just have to wait for the feeling to pass, and some people even enjoy it. I’m not one of those people, by the way. To prevent this, you can also grind the peppercorns in a mortar (toast them briefly first) and then sieve them over your dish. That way you get the flavor without biting into whole peppercorns.
Sichuan
You can do much more with it than just cook Sichuanese dishes, but I’ll still list my favorite dishes from Sichuan for you. One of my favorite dishes of all time is mapo tofu: silken tofu with ground pork in a fiery red sauce. Without Sichuan pepper, the dish just isn’t the same. The same goes for spicy Sichuan eggplant, fish braised in spicy sauce and dumplings with chili oil.
Oil
Since we’re talking about oil: you can also make incredibly delicious infused oil with it, which you can then pour over your egg, rice, fish or vegetables. The flavor is truly amazing. Gently heat whole Sichuan peppercorns with a neutral oil (use about four times as much oil as peppercorns) until it starts to bubble lightly. Don’t let the oil get any hotter than that; you don’t want to fry the peppercorns. Keep stirring gently until the aromas are released from the pepper. Remove from the heat and let it stand overnight before straining the oil. This flavor bomb will keep for months in the refrigerator.
Fries
Ground Sichuan pepper is actually delicious on almost everything. For the very best fries, sprinkle plenty of salt and Sichuan pepper over the potatoes. Mmmm. It’s also delicious on fried potatoes, by the way. Or use it to season spiced nuts, sprinkle it over your fried chicken, rub it on a leg of lamb, stir it into your mayonnaise, or use it to pickle cucumbers. Seriously, name a dish and I’m sure it would benefit from a pinch of this wonder spice.
Desserts and cocktails
In restaurants, you’re also increasingly seeing pepper used in desserts and cocktails. A little Sichuan pepper in your vanilla or chocolate ice cream works wonders, or sprinkle it over your chocolate mousse. Its floral flavor also works very well in cocktails. Let the peppercorns infuse while making sugar syrup, and use it in your next whiskey sour.
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