Beef and black bean chili oil in the Lao Gan Ma style (fresh chili method)
Chinese Cooking Demystified · ♥ 50.2K likes · 2.6M views · 10 min video
Read about ground beef in the BrightCulinary Book
Timestamp
Ingredients
Method
Techniques
- 400 g fresh red chili peppers
Slice the chilies in half, derib and deseed to 80 to 90 percent, and drain in the sun about half an hour until mostly dry to the touch.
- ½ tsp salt
Transfer to a strainer, mix in the salt and let purge 15 minutes, then squeeze out excess moisture.
- 80 g doucher, Chinese fermented black soybean
- hot boiled water
Rinse the doucher, cover with hot boiled water and steep about half an hour.
- 2 tsp whole Sichuan peppercorns
Toast the whole Sichuan peppercorns in a dry wok over a medium low flame about three minutes, until a few oil splotches show on the wok.
Grind the toasted peppercorns to a fine powder in a mortar or spice grinder.
- 150 g ground beef
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp Sichuan peppercorn powder
- ¼ tsp white pepper powder
- 1 tsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp liaojiu aka Shaoxing wine
- 1 cup oil
Marinate the ground beef with salt, Sichuan peppercorn powder, white pepper powder, soy sauce and Shaoxing wine.
- 8 cloves smashed garlic
- 1 inch smashed ginger
- ¼ whole onion, cut into slices
Heat the oil over a medium flame and fry the smashed garlic, ginger and sliced onion about eight minutes until golden brown, then strain the aromatics out and return the oil to the pot.
Over a medium high flame fry the beef about six minutes in total, past done, until crisp and the fat rendered out; remove and return the oil to the pot.
Fry the minced chilies over medium low to medium at most, about 12 minutes, until they expel their moisture and deepen from red toward crimson.
- 1½ tbsp red fragrant chili powder
Add the red fragrant chili powder and the steeped doucher and fry about a minute until the doucher's moisture has bubbled away.
- 1 tsp MSG
- 1 tsp sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp chicken bouillon powder
Return the beef, season with MSG, sugar, salt, chicken bouillon powder and the remaining Sichuan peppercorn powder and mix.
- 2 tbsp red fragrant chili powder
- 2 tbsp Chinese baijiu
Variation, shortcut version: soak two tablespoons of red fragrant chili powder in two tablespoons of baijiu.
- ¼ cup oil
Variation, shortcut version: fry the aromatics in a quarter cup of oil with every other ingredient halved, strain, fry the beef until crisp, add the soaked chili powder and fry over a low flame one to two minutes until it stops bubbling.
- ¼ cup Lao Gan Ma black bean chili
Variation, shortcut version: stir in a quarter cup of shop-bought Lao Gan Ma black bean chili and the seasoning, and rest one day.