Spicy Chinese Recipes To Make You Sweat | Marion's Kitchen

Spicy, porky, Szechuan peppercorns and beautiful, soft, silky tofu. This is my version of classic Mapo Tofu. Wow, I've eaten so many different versions of this dish. I've eaten it in Shanghai, I've eaten it in Bangkok, I've eaten it in Australia, in America I've used all of those inspirations to make my very favourite version at home, which is super spicy and porky and very, very satisfying, can I say? I love making this dish. Okay, so let's get started. Szechuan peppercorns is one of the most crucial ingredients for this dish. You want that numbing sensation and that beautiful, high citrusy note that you get from the peppercorns. It's essential. We want to treat them with some care. We're going to heat them up, get them releasing all of their flavours and aromas. An interesting thing with Szechuan peppercorns I've found is that they can vary a lot in their strength, depending on where you are in the world. If you find that your Szechuan peppercorns are very, very over-the-top numbing and spicy, just use a little bit less where you are. I find here in Thailand they're a little bit milder, so I tend to use a little bit more. Once I can see just beautiful little whispers of smoke, I'm going to pop that into my mortar and crush these to a fine powder. Okay, so that's the sort of texture that you're looking for. Now let's talk about the tofu. This is the other really crucial part to get right. What you're looking for is a soft tofu. Don't go for a silken tofu because that one will disintegrate completely in the pan. You want one that just says soft. It should, once you've drained out that liquid, get it out onto a board. It should really look like a firm jelly. That's the kind of texture that you're going for. I want some cubes of this, so I'm going to start by just running my knife through the middle. Then across this way. Just me, there's something so satisfying about slicing soft tofu. I love it. Then once more this way. One extra little step that I like to include that's not in all recipes, and that is to just kind of heat the tofu in some salted water. I've got some hot water here. It's not rapidly boiling, so I don't want it to break up the tofu. Then just gently place your tofu pieces into there. This is going to nicely season the tofu, but also kind of firm it up a little bit so that it's less inclined to disintegrate in the pan. Just let that simmer really gently about three minutes, then take it off the heat. Just let it sit in that salty water until our pork chilli sauce is ready. Now it's time to make our sauce, and this is where all the magic happens. Let's get our wok heating up. I want a really decent amount of oil here, because of course, one of the characteristics that I love about this dish is that beautiful red sheen of chilli oil that sits on the top of the dish. Then add in some pork mince. Just give that pork mince a minute or so to really sizzle and start to release some of its juices. This next ingredient, also crucial, so I'm going to need you guys to have a search online or head to your Asian grocer and find a spicy fermented bean paste called doubanjiang. This is what gives our dish that characteristic red, beautiful, deep, dark colour, plus all that savoury umami flavour that we want for our sauce as well. Now here's where I need you to exercise a little bit of patience. I need that oil and all the porky juices to kind of soak up all of that chilli paste for everything to turn a beautiful red colour. After two minutes here, you can see that pork is starting to turn a really deep red colour. We've got some lovely red oil there. I'm going to add in some garlic and ginger. Now for the chilli powder. This is also going to lend us a beautiful red colour. It's really up to you how spicy you want this dish. Classically, it should be spicy and numbing, so take it as far as you can go. Now I want to add in some chicken stock and then all of my seasonings. I've got some soy sauce and some dark soy sauce, some sugar and a little dash of vinegar. Now I want to bring this up to a simmer and this is where all the magic is going to happen. The flavours are going to develop. Pork is going to become really savoury and full of flavour. I want probably about three or four minutes or until that liquid has reduced by about a quarter and it's starting to thicken up. This is looking good. It is smelling divine, can I say. So good. Now I want to thicken everything up. I'm going to add in some cornflour mixed with a little bit of water. Just like magic, look at how thick and glossy that becomes. I also want to add in my Szechuan peppercorn powder that we made earlier here. I like to taste this at this point just to see if I need any more seasoning. That is perfect. It really should hit you right in the back of the throat with that spice and the chilli and the peppercorns. So now this is ready for our tofu. Gently strain out the tofu. I want a little bit of sesame oil in here just to finish it off. Just gently mix that tofu through that sauce. A little sprinkling of spring onion here. Look at how beautiful and glossy that sauce is. Flavour in here guys, out of this world. Serve it up. Even your tofu adverse friends are going to love this. Now a final sprinkling of spring onion. So there you go guys, my version of Mapo Tofu. I have a lot of favourite Chinese dishes but I'm telling you, this one is right up there with the best. Wow, that is just a huge explosion of flavour. The contrast between that silky tofu and then that porky sauce. The peppercorns and that numbing sauce, the whole thing. It's just a triumph, a triumph. So let's just have an appreciation moment for those glistening, porky, spicy noodles. I don't even know what I can tell you about this one guys. It is epic. These are my spicy pork hand-pulled noodles. So you guys know we do a lot of noodles on this channel but I'm going to come right out and say I think these are at the very top. If you kind of imagine the very best, most unctuous Italian pork ragu and then combine that with Sichuan spicy flavours and hand-pulled noodles and all the good things, then you've got this dish. Let's get started on the sauce first of all. This is the simple part. We want some oyster sauce, some soy sauce, some dark soy sauce, sugar, and just a little dash of vinegar here. So if you can get a hold of Chinese black vinegar, that would be the best one to use. I've just got some regular rice vinegar here. Just give that a mix. Now the porky sauce part of this dish is totally not traditional at all but it's really tasty. Just trust me. On this one, I'm going to heat up a wok or a large frying pan. Add some oil and then here's our very first non-traditional ingredient and that is some cherry tomatoes. Now stand back because this is going to splash a little. What you want to do here is really blister those tomatoes. I want them to get all caramelised and charry on the outside. That's when they'll release all their sweetness and flavour. So we're kind of like wok roasting I guess rather than oven roasting. Okay now see that colour on that tomato? That's exactly what we want. And why tomatoes? So tomatoes have a natural amount of glutamates which is flavour and umami and all those good things. Now I'm going to add some garlic and some ginger. Now I'm going to go in with some spices. Some ground Sichuan peppercorns. These guys are going to give a beautiful numbing sensation and a very high kind of citrus note to them. And some chilli powder. And now here's the next non-traditional ingredient and that is sweet paprika. This is going to give us a beautiful red colour without flavouring the dish too much. It's really good if you don't want to use a heap of chilli powder because you can keep it really mild. And now for the pork. When that pork is just about cooked, pour in that sauce that we made earlier. Now turn the heat down a little bit. Just let that pork simmer away and soak up all of that flavour. Just a couple of minutes. Okay so this pork is looking good. You guys will not believe the amount of intense flavour we have in there in such a short amount of time. I'm just going to turn this off for a minute and let's go talk about our noodles. So I've got some hand-pulled noodles here. You can find the video on how to make these on my YouTube channel. They're at the point now where I want to stretch them a little more as I put them into the boiling water. Now you just want to stretch these out straight into the water. These noodles are kind of like a very rustic, hearty, chewy, beautiful texture to them. They kind of remind me I guess of like an Italian pappardelle or a fresh Italian pappardelle. So if you did want to use a pasta or an udon noodle as well, that would be a good substitute. You don't have to go to the trouble of making these from scratch, although it is worth it. These only need a couple of minutes but before they're finished, I'm going to scoop out some of this cooking liquid in case I want to thin down my sauce a little bit later on. Okay so these are looking good. Take them over to my sauce. Turn that heat on under the sauce and get those noodles in there. Now this is the part I love, give everything a mix in there. Look at that beautiful sauce and those noodles. Now some of that starchiness from the noodles is thickening up that sauce. I'm just going to add a little bit of that cooking liquid that we saved. Just a dash and mix that through. Smell right now, so incredible. Now just pop this out onto a serving plate. And just a little sprinkling of spring onion. And there you go, spicy pork, hand-pulled noodles. I just don't know what is better than this. Look at that, look at that beautiful noodle. The flavour of the Sichuan peppercorn and that beautiful, that little bit of tanginess from that vinegar really comes through. But I'm telling you, those noodles, they are the star of the show. Chewy, beautiful texture, soaking up all of that porky tomato sauce. Lost for words. Spicy pork, chewy noodles and all mixed up in a very unique Sichuan sauce. This is my version of Dan Dan noodles. Okay guys, so you know by now, I love noodles. I love everything that's spicy. I have a lot of spicy noodle dishes but this one, can I say, is right up there at the top for me. It is just... The flavour, I can't wait for you guys to try it. Let's get on to how we make all that flavour. We're going to start off with the Sichuan peppercorns first. I want to toast these. I want really fresh, fragrant spices for this one. I'm going to toast these in a dry frying pan. I have to say, these Sichuan peppercorns are a real integral flavour for this dish. I'd really try and search them out. A lot of you have said that you can't find them in your area. Have a look online and see if you can order them because they're pretty special. They have this numbing sensation as well as a little bit of pepper heat. They're pretty good. These have just had a minute or so. I can smell how fragrant they are. I'm going to put them into my mortar and then just grind these to a fine powder. This is the kind of texture you're looking for. That pepper, we'll use a little bit later on in our pork. In the meantime, I need to make a sauce. There are a whole bunch of different versions of Dan Dan noodles. Mine veers more towards the traditional where it's a bit lighter. It has almost like a broth-like texture to the sauce and not as oily. That's what we're going to go with today. I'm going to start off with a little bit of soy sauce. This is my homemade Sichuan chili oil. You can buy Sichuan chili oil or you can have a look at my YouTube channel and make this one. It's pretty easy to make at home as well. Has a really lovely flavour, lots of little spices in there. You want to make sure you get a good couple of spoonfuls of the oil. Then also some of the chili sediment that's in the bottom or the chili flakes. This is definitely not a dish for the faint of heart. It is fiery. I also want some dark soy sauce. I want some vinegar as well. The more traditional ingredient would be Chinese black rice vinegar. I've only got white today. A little bit of sugar. Just give that a mix. Look at that beautiful red colour already. I'm going to add a little bit of the noodle cooking water to this a bit later. As I said, I want a really nice thin texture to this sauce slash broth, I guess you would call it. Before we start stir-frying the pork, there's just one more ingredient I want to talk to you guys about. That is the preserved pickled vegetable that's usually used in this dish. The very traditional one is called ya tai. That one is a pickled mustard green. I'm using what I could find today in my local Chinese market. I'm using pickled cabbage. That one is dong chai. Either one, pickled mustard greens or pickled cabbage. You can also use kimchi as well. I've done that and it works really well. What you're looking for here... These come in these really cute little earthenware jars, which is nice. What it adds is kind of like a funky saltiness. That's why kimchi is a pretty good substitute for this. A couple of tablespoons there. I told you this dish was not for the faint of heart. We're going to add some extra dried red chillies as well. You can leave them whole, but I like to make them even more spicy by slicing them up. At this point, we've got everything set up and ready for our stir-fry. We've got some Chinese cooking wine here, or Shaoxing wine. I've got my pork. You could use beef as well for this. I like the pork, it's kind of got some extra fattiness there, which is good flavour. Then our pickled cabbage and our soy sauce as well. Let's just get going in the wok. Of course, an extra large frying pan would also do here. Wok is not super essential. Just make sure it's large and that you can get some good high heat underneath your pan. Add in a little bit of oil. I'm going to add my chillies in first, and then the pork. I really spread that pork out. The idea here is that I want this pork to get really dry and crispy. I'm going to spread it out in the wok, push it down. Try and get a bit of colour and heat on the bottom of it before I move it around too much. Now that I can see that I'm starting to get some colour on that pork, I'm going to give everything a mix through. Now that I've got some nice colour here on my pork, I'm going to add in the Sichuan pepper. Toss that through. Now the pickled cabbage, soy sauce, and some Chinese wine. We're not looking for this to be saucy. The saucy part comes a little bit later. What I want is for this pork to really dry out, soak up the flavours of the soy sauce, the spices, and the wine. It will be kind of like a more dry, porky topping. This is the kind of texture that you're looking for here, for the pork. That looks good. Just turn that off, and now let's concentrate on our noodles. Now time for the noodles. I'm using these Chinese wheat noodles. I just want to get them in some boiling water. Just while these are cooking, I want to steal a little bit of that noodle cooking water. Just about half a cup. Then pour that into that spicy sauce we made earlier. Just give that a mix. Now you want to spoon a very generous amount of this saucy goodness into the bottom of each of your bowls. Once those noodles are nice and tender, just pull some out. Then drop that straight into that spicy sauce. Now the pork goes on top. Then just a little sprinkling of spring onion. There you go guys. The mixing part, this is where the magic happens. You want to take your noodles and that pork, mix everything through that sauce at the bottom. You can see, if you just push the noodles aside, you've got some of that soupy, soupy broth slash sauce at the bottom. Yum. It looks like such a humble noodle dish, but wow. The flavour, it really packs a punch. That salty flavour from the pickled cabbage and the pork and the Sichuan peppercorns, so good. This version of General Tso's chicken, not your average bear my friends. This one is deeply savoury, a bit more fragrant than on the sweet side. It is so delicious. This is my spicy General Tso's chicken. I love the original, I don't know if you'd call it original, but the typical American version of General Tso. That kind of sweet, sugary, pop, light lollipop kind of colour, love that one. But I thought, what if we made a more adult version of General Tso? A little spicy, a little bit more serious, a little less on the sweet side. Well, here we go guys. It's kind of like my adults only version of General Tso. Let's get into it. There's a few little secret ingredients here, including in this marinade. First of all, we're going fairly conventional here. Soy sauce and some dark sweet soy sauce as well. This is going to give us a really deep caramelly kind of colour to our fried chicken. And an egg white. I decide to give the egg white a bit of a whisk before I add it to the chicken, make sure it's nice and loose. Here come the little extra ingredients that kind of make things a bit special. First of all, I'm adding some vodka. The vodka is going to make this marinade quite volatile. When it hits the oil, it's going to really kind of crisp up. And also, alcohol is a really good carrier of flavour. So it's going to make sure that we get a really good flavour around our chicken as well. If you'd like to leave things alcohol-free, you could always leave the vodka out. But do add this next ingredient, which is baking soda. The baking soda, again, is going to kind of cause things to puff up and get nice and crispy. I give that a really good mix. You'll see here that there is quite a little liquid here. And that has been done on purpose because what I want to do later on, when I mix this really wet marinade with the flour that I've got, it's going to create like a really kind of craggly, crusty outside. Which is a good thing, my friends. You'll see. Now let's just leave that chicken to do its thing for a few minutes while we make our sauce. Now I'm going to start off with some chicken stock here and some soy sauce. And then here are a couple of more kind of serious ingredients that you don't typically get in your General Tso sauce. So I've got some Chinese Shaoxing wine. And this one adds a really beautiful floral kind of fragrance to the sauce. I want a good couple of tablespoons of that. And then the other special ingredient is Chinese black vinegar. So this vinegar obviously has a dark colour, you can see, which is different to other types of vinegar. But also it has a kind of extra dimension of flavour. Again, a nice beautiful sort of floral fragrance. And if you can't get a hold of it, just pop in some red wine vinegar. That'll give you that sort of extra boost of flavour. And now I am after a little bit of sweetness here, just to balance out all those salty flavours. But not as much as you would usually find in this kind of sauce. And then finally, a little bit of cornflour here. That's just going to help the thing to thicken up and get all glossy in the pan. Alright, so here we go with the deep-frying the chicken part, which as you guys know, if you've been a long-time watcher of my channel, you'll know how much I enjoy this part. Frying chicken, it's like one of life's pure pleasures. Now, a little bit of plain flour here or all-purpose flour. And I'm going to cut that with some cornflour. Cornflour is going to make things a little bit lighter and crispier. Now just give those a good mix. Now I want to get all of this chicken and all that liquid into the flour. And now you're going to have to get your hands dirty here. Just give everything a good mix. And what you want is for each little piece of chicken here to kind of get all craggly and crusty. And it should kind of look like there's a bunch of cornflakes almost stuck to the outside of each piece of chicken. And if you have a look here, this is the kind of situation that you're going for. Now just gently shake off any excess flour and get that chicken into that hot oil. Now I want a really nice deep dark color on this because I want the outside to get really really crispy so that when we're stir-frying it in the sauce a little bit later, we retain some of that crunch. All right, so that's starting to look really good. I'm going to pull my chicken pieces out as they hit just the right color. So now we have the perfect base. Crispy dark chicken. If you have a look here, I'll just have a listen to the sound. That's some crispy chicken. And what we're after here, I'll cut this open so you can have a look. But you can see that chicken inside is still really nice and juicy. But we've got that little thin crusty layer all around that outside there and that's going to stick and soak up all of the awesome sauce that's coming. All right, let's get going on the awesome sauce. Well, I might just... I'll just try a little piece just to make sure. I mean, you really could just eat all of that exactly the way it is right now. Oh, that's so good. Oh, yum. It's really hard to keep going, but we will persevere. It's going to get even better. Now into a hot wok, I just want a little bit of oil. And some garlic. Some ginger. All right, now here comes the spicy part. I'm going to chop in, seasonal, a whole bunch of dried red chillies here. It's going to give that a nice kick. Okay, a bit of a stir-fry. Don't leave that too long. I don't want the garlic to burn. I'm going to go straight in with my sauce. Now just give that a bit of a stir and let it bubble away. Get all those ingredients making friends in there. I want this to end up kind of thick and glossy before I add the chicken in. All right, that's looking seriously good. I'm going to add in my chicken. Ah, look at that gloss. Yum. You see all those little kind of uneven craggly bits around the chicken. That's giving us ample room for lots of that sauce to kind of get soaked up in there. I just want to add some spring onion here. There we go. That looks seriously spicy and good. Get that on a plate. There you go guys. Not your average General Tso's chicken, but my kind of slightly spicy, a little bit more adult version. Let's just check and make sure it's really worth your time. That has got some really good kick. And you know what I love? You still get that tangy sweetness that you would get from like a, you know, regular kind of General Tso's chicken, but you've got all these other little mysterious almost flavours like coming from the Shaoxing wine and the black vinegar. It's just like a more interesting kind of version. Now this is a version of General Tso's chicken I can seriously get behind. Yum. I mean, we make a lot of dumplings. This really simple version, can't be beat. Yum. Steaming hot dumplings. This, my friends, is one bowl you need to be eating like right now. These are my classic prawn dumplings in spicy chili oil sauce. So you guys know by now dumplings are literally like my favourite food group. These dumplings are really classic, really beautiful, elegant Chinese flavours with a big, not so elegant, big punchy kind of chili oil bath at the end. And it all works together beautifully. Alright, let's get started on the filling part first of all. Now for me, this dumpling really depends on two things. One is the beautiful pure flavour of the prawns. The other thing is the kind of crunchy element we're going to add. That is with the water chestnuts. You can find water chestnuts in a can. They're perfectly fine to use canned. I'm lucky here in Thailand, I can find them fresh. Now you just want to fine dice on these. Now we want some really nice, beautiful herbs here. So I'm going to use some coriander and some spring onion. For me, texture and chopping here is really important. If your spring onion is really quite large, you're going to want to thin it out through the stem here. Mine's not too bad but I know you can get some uber big ones that are almost like leeks. Make sure you get a really nice, fine chop. Now some really simple aromatics here. I just want some ginger and some garlic. Now come the prawns. Now you don't need a big cleaver here like I have. It is more fun with a cleaver but a regular knife is just fine. Just make sure you're chopping into nice, fine pieces. You could totally do this in a food processor. What I find though is that when you hand chop your prawns, I know it's a little bit of extra work but it's really worth it because you get just the right amount of pop and bounce and texture and you get some nice little chunks of prawn in there as well. But who am I to judge guys? If you want to do the food processor way, totally go ahead and do it. The key to getting a really fine chop here is to go ahead and do some chopping and then fold the prawn meat over and then go back in the opposite direction. This is the kind of texture that you're looking for. Pop that into your bowl. To bind all of this together, I'm going to add an egg white. The egg white only here because I don't want to add any extra flavouring with the yolk. I want to keep this as cleanly prawny and a little bit herby as possible. I'm sure prawny is a word. Maybe. A good pinch of salt here and then just a little dash of white pepper. White pepper because it has a more milder kind of flavour than a very harsh in-your-face black pepper. Now just give everything a mix. You want to give this a really good kind of beating almost. You'll notice that everything starts to become a bit stickier as you're going. That means that the egg white is binding everything together and firming up all the proteins in there. We're going to get a nice bouncy dumpling filling. With the wrapping, I'm going to keep it really simple. See, I don't ask too much. A lot of chopping but simple wrapping. There you go. Grab yourself a wrapper. I'm using some gyoza wrappers today. You just want some filling in the middle. Here is one super important tip for when you're using store-bought wrappers. They're often quite dry and they need way more water than you think to get everything to stick together. Get a lot of water on that edge there. I like to just do two pleats on one side at the top here. Push that together and then use your fingers to kind of seal that edge. So we've got a couple of pleats on one side and then smooth on the other side. To be honest, this is going to all wrinkle up once we get it into the water anyway. So you don't have to be too pedantic here. I'm just waiting for my water to come up to a boil so I can cook my dumplings. In the meantime, let's make our dipping sauce. Very simple. I just need some soy sauce. For me, what sets apart a really good dumpling dipping sauce is... Dumpling dipping sauce. It's a mouthful. What sets it apart from a good and a bad one to me is the addition of vinegar. If you can get a hold of this Chinese black vinegar, that is going to give you the most beautiful... It's almost like a red wine vinegar sort of flavour. If you can't get the black vinegar, feel free to add a little bit of red wine vinegar instead. I just want a good, about equal amount of soy sauce and vinegar for my liking. For me, it's got to be red oil dipping sauce. Red oil meaning chili oil. So many of you guys have made my Sichuan chili oil. I know you all love it. If you haven't given it a try, check out my video on YouTube on how to make it. This is what it looks like. It has loads of different spices in there. You can use a store-bought chili oil, of course. Make sure you're getting a mixture of chili flakes and the chili oil in there. To kind of round out the flavours, you really want a little dash of sugar here. You won't notice the sweetness, but it will give the dipping sauce a really beautiful, balanced kind of flavour. Then a little smattering of grated garlic for some extra kick at the end. My water's ready to go. It's simmering, but you don't want it really rapidly boiling too much, because you can run the risk of your dumplings breaking apart. I just want a nice gentle bath for my dumplings here. You want to cook these for about 5-6 minutes, or until the dumpling wrapper becomes nice and frilly. You can just see a little bit of that pink prawn kind of popping through the wrapper. These are looking ready to go, which is good news, because that means I get to try them soon. Just give them a drain, pop them into a bowl. I like to go kind of elegant, a little bit fancy-schmancy with these ones. I just put a little serving of dumplings in here. Some of that dipping sauce drizzled on top. Kind of want to make sure you're going to get a really good mouthful of that dipping sauce. Be generous. Then just a little smattering of spring onion. There you go, I mean, balls of dumplings don't get much better than that. Look at how pretty that is. Let's just make sure that I've done a good job for you guys. If you have a look at that filling in there, it's just beautifully simple. With the prawn, just a flex of those herbs. But the texture that you get, so you get that crunch from the water chestnut, and those little hits of flavour from the spring onion, from the coriander, garlic and ginger. Then you get the vinegar, the chilli oil and the soy sauce. It really is quite the symphony. Beautiful. I mean, we make a lot of dumplings. This really simple version, can't be beat. Yum. Spicy, savoury, peanutty sauce. Did I say spicy? Yes, this sauce packs a punch with chilli and Sichuan peppercorns and all the things. These are my Sichuan Bang Bang Chicken Noodles. Bang Bang Chicken is a classic Sichuan dish. Usually served cold, but with like this hot, numbing, tingling, spicy red sauce. Love it. But what I thought was, why not add some noodles? Because you know, we just love noodles. I love noodles. So let's do it with noodles. Let's get into the chicken first of all. There's a little technique that I have here for poaching chicken, which is like button down, you know, perfect every time. Take your chicken breast. Now I know, you guys know, I'm a legs and thigh girl. But this dish kind of really calls out for chicken breast. You want like a soft, kind of shredded chicken. Sort of and a sort of more mild chicken flavour, if that makes sense. We're all about the sauce for this one. Anyway, for this one I'm using breast. That goes... Literally sounded like that just... For this one, we are using chicken breast. Pop your chicken into some water. Just sort of enough to kind of cover the chicken. We want to go in with some flavourings here. So I've got some ginger, some garlic. Because I want like maximum flavour out of these guys, I'm going to give them a light bruising, so they release all of their aromas and flavour. I've said flavour a million times in this video, but you know what? There is a lot of flavour in this recipe. Scoop those pieces out into that water. And then I also want some spring onion as well. Like I often have some spring onion kind of like kicking around at the bottom of my crisper. So it's a great way to use that up. You don't need the most perfect spring onion here, because it's just for the broth. And now I've started with room temperature water. That's on purpose. Now I want to turn the heat on. Because that's going to give our chicken time to kind of gently warm through, as the heat sort of gets higher and higher in that pot. So we're kind of just coaxing the chicken into being cooked without like kind of shocking it with like, you know, really high heat. And that's going to give us a juicier chicken breast. So wait till this comes to a simmer, and I'll tell you what to do next. All right, so now that you can see those little bubbles. Now I don't want you to get any further with the bubbles. I just want that really gentle bubbling here. Now you can let this go for 8 minutes. So these are 2 200g chicken breasts, just so you know about the size. So 8 minutes. All right, so while that's happening, let's do our spicy sauce. Yes, my favourite bit. Okay, what we need to do is talk about Sichuan peppercorns, which are in fact not peppercorns. I know, very confusing. Sichuan peppercorns are not related to peppercorns at all. They're actually the red little husk of the seeds of a prickly ash shrub or prickly ash tree. One of the things that's really interesting guys, is when you're buying Sichuan peppercorns, have a look in here. Now, as I said, it's that red husk on the outside that actually gives you all the tingling sensation and the numbing and the heat and that kind of citrus flavour that Sichuan peppercorns are renowned for. If you have a look in here, you can see there are actually some little black peppercorns in here, but there's only a couple. Those black peppercorns are actually not what you want. They will be all gritty and grainy and they don't have any flavour at all. So when you're buying Sichuan peppercorns, make sure you've got mostly red husk and not too much of the little black peppercorns themselves. Got a little tip. We want to get these toasting though, because that's going to release the most amount of flavour. Pop those into a dry pan. Now, a lot of you guys ask me where you can buy Sichuan peppercorns. Any Asian grocer is going to have them, but do you know what? Have a look online as well. That's oftentimes the easiest way to get a hold of them. Once I can start seeing some little tendrils of smoke there and I can smell, you can literally smell like this citrus kind of aroma coming off those peppercorns or that, you know, they should just call it Sichuan husks. I don't know. Anyway, I want you to get some sesame seeds in there now. I'm just going to push those around and lightly toast them. Once I can see that kind of light, blonde, golden kind of colour in there, these are good to go. Now you just want to grind these to a fine powder. This is the kind of situation you're after here, a nice fine powder. Then into a bowl. To that, I want to add some soy sauce. Here's an interesting one. This is Chinese black vinegar. It has more of a kind of fruity note than a just straight out like white vinegar. So Chinese black vinegar, if you can get it. If you can't, just do like half white, half balsamic vinegar. That works too. And some chilli oil. So watch with the chilli oil. Different brands will be spicier or less spicy. I don't mind if it's too spicy. So I go pretty hard with the chilli oil. Now the other thing here I'm using is some peanut butter. So it's not typically traditional but you would usually use like a Chinese sesame paste or roasted sesame paste, which I actually find really difficult to get a hold of. So I'm sure you guys have a problem with that as well. So I just use peanut butter. Not quite the same flavour but you get the same sort of nutty creaminess. And then because, you know, I'm me and I need more spicy things. And actually, you know, this dish really, it's, you know, the magic combo here is that positioning of the Sichuan peppercorn and the numbing and the tingling and really kind of spicy kind of heat. That's really where the magic happens in this dish. So do try to push it as far as you can. I'm going to add some more chilli flakes here. More spice. Now you're going to need to, it's a little bit awkward to mix this one because of the peanut butter but just kind of get in there. Give it a whisk. I'm going to pour some hot liquid from the chicken poaching stock later so that'll help dissolve that peanut butter a little bit as well. So the chicken breast has had its cooking time. Now what I want to do is turn the heat off and just let that chicken sit in the hot water there for 10 minutes. That's another 10 minutes and it's just going to slowly cook through. Okay, so chicken has had its lovely warm resting time. What I want to do now is just scoop some of this stuff off the top and chicken pieces out and I want to get them straight into a water bath filled with ice. That's going to stop the cooking process, make sure that they don't overcook and get dry. And also it means that they're going to get nice and cold so I'm going to be able to shred them quicker. Now just take your cooled chicken pieces and just shred that up. Now back into our saucepan here, we have some lovely flavoured cooking stock here. So let's just scoop out a little bit of that and that's going to go into our sauce. And now we're coming to my favourite part, the bit where we get everything together. So I've got some noodles here. These were dried udon noodles. I cooked them and then just rinsed them until they were nice and cool and tossed them in some sesame oil so they're nice and pliable. I'm going to add a little or a decent or a big handful of those. And then some of your chicken on top. Some cucumber, I've just got some cucumber matchsticks that I sliced up here. And now that all-important sauce. Now you want to be generous with that sauce. This is where all the flavour is coming from. I want almost like a little swimming pool of sauce in the bottom of the dish here. Now it's everything together. Get that sauce underneath. So excited about this one. Holy smokes, that is releasing endorphins in my brain as we speak. The chilli and the Sichuan pepper combo is like fire, but really good fire. And then that citrusy flavour comes through and then you get wham, like this like tingling, numbing thing going on. Literally, it's like wow. Wow, it's like a wow moment. Holy crap. I don't swear on my show, that's really bad. Fiery, hot, tingling, packed full of spices. Friends, this is one Sichuan classic dish you need to know about. This is Sichuan spicy boiled fish. So this is one of my all-time favourite restaurant dishes and I always, for years, thought it was way too complicated to make at home. But actually, as it turns out, it's not. It just tastes really complicated. But this is the version I've figured out that's a bit easier to make at home than the restaurant version. First up, we want to deal with the fish. Now, I just have some fillets of snapper here. Yes, if you were doing this classically in the restaurant, you might use a whole fish fillet, use the bones. Everything's so much easier just to use the fillets at home. I want to slice these sort of on a diagonal so that I get nice, large, flat pieces, flat-ish pieces. And the whole deal with the fish in this dish is that the way that we marinate it is going to alter the texture of the fish. So rather than having a really soft fish that sort of breaks apart, our marinade is going to almost firm up the fish and give it like a velvety texture. Now, you can use any sort of white fish fillet that you have in your area. Cod would be great, halibut, any of those sorts of things. So let's get on to those marinade ingredients I was talking about. First up is Chinese cooking wine. So you can find this online, really easy to order online or from an Asian grocer. It's going to give us some flavour. And then also, we want some cornflour. This is going to help us with the texture. It's going to give that velvety feel, firm up the fish, all those sorts of things. So just a little bit of that and a pinch of salt here. Now give that a really good mix. Now just leave that to marinate while we get the rest of the dish ready. Now, as I said, this home version of mine is very easy but there are quite a few ingredients and spices but not anything you shouldn't be unfamiliar with if you've been a long-time follower of my channel. First of all, let's get going on building the broth. This whole dish is all about building layer and layer and layer of flavour. So a little bit of oil first of all. Some star anise. Cinnamon stick. And this really is a key ingredient, guys. You need to get a hold of some Sichuan peppercorns. Search them out online. They're the ingredient that will add the super numbing, tingling sensation that is a classic Sichuan characteristic. Some cardamom pods. And some dried chillies. Now these are like kind of the spicy bird's eye dried chillies. They're really hot. This dish should be really hot but look, you can go with like a milder dried chilli if you wanted to tone it down a little bit. Now give all those spices in there time to make friends. That smells glorious already. Now we can go in with some garlic. Some ginger. Oh wow, that really is a killer combo already. Literally, the fragrance right here is so beautiful. It's just got all of the spices and the chilli and the garlic and the ginger. I'm having such a good time already. But we need to go in with a few more things. So this is dou ban jiang. It is a Sichuan chilli bean fermented paste and this is going to give you colour, sort of a rich umami kind of flavour. You could substitute miso and a little bit of gochujang or miso and a little bit of just regular chilli garlic paste if you can't get a hold of this. And then these are some salted black beans. Look, I've made this without this ingredient before and you can get away with it. But if you can, this adds a really lovely salty, again, salty umami element. And what you need to do with these guys is just soak them in a little bit of water first of all and then they soften up a little and now you can add them into the dish. And now here's another little cheat. So as I said, typically, classically, you would make this with the whole fish bones. I'm going to go with some store-bought fish stock here because, you know, I'm just making things still good but a little bit easier. Now season that with just a little dash of soy sauce at this stage. You can always add a little more later if you like. Now I want to let all those flavours really develop and I want that fish broth to really take on all of the yumminess. So let that simmer for about 10 minutes. In the meantime, we're going to prep some veggies. So I've got some bean shoots here and I'm just going to blanch them in some boiling water. And I've also got some snow pea shoots as well. Now this little jumble of vegetables literally needs like seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds. I'm going to pull them out just so they're still nice and sort of crunchy and tender but just that raw edge has been taken off. Okay, pop those into a really large serving bowl and we're going to pour our soup on at the end over that. So our broth has been dutifully bubbling away here and now I'm going to go in with my fish. Now I don't want to overcook that fish so barely kind of like three minutes here just until the fish turns opaque. Perfect. Now turn the heat off and we're still not done yet. We've got some more work to do in this wok but for the minute, I want to decant all of this mixture into that serving bowl. Now just need a little bit of spring onion here and a sprinkling of sesame seeds. Now for that final little bit of hot oil goodness, amazingness. Let's start off with some chilli oil. Typically you use just regular oil. I like to do half and half. Half chilli oil, half regular oil just so you get a really bright red colour and like an extra layer of flavour because I mean who doesn't want an extra layer of flavour? Now go in with some more Sichuan peppercorns, some more chilli. Literally this dish is like, you know, you love it if you're a masochist but anyway, I just love it because I like spicy things but it's kind of like scary spicy. Anyway, give that a little bit of a sizzle. And now pour this over the top so that those spring onions get like sizzling and stuff. You'll see. And there you go friends, my version of the very classic Sichuan boiled fish but like an easier version for you guys to make at home. I need to get in here because like this is just heaven. It should be... It's a little bit velvety, almost like a little bit chewy in a good way. Honestly guys, if you make like one or you try one dish from like one Sichuan dish, it has to be this one. Okay friends, we're making like the ultimate in spicy chicken dishes here and there's practically more chilli than chicken in this one and that is a good thing my friends because we are making my version of hot and numbing chicken. Let's go with the chicken marinating first of all because this is like the little extra step that kind of gives the really big kick of umami and saltiness to the dish. So to the chicken, I'm going to add some soy sauce, some Chinese Shaoxing wine, some sesame oil, a little pinch of salt here and then some cornflour. So give that a mix and yes, so this like coating on the chicken is highly seasoned and as I said, gives us all the flavour because when we go to do the stir-frying bit later on, you'll see we don't actually add much sauce. It's not like a saucy kind of dish, it's just kind of like fried chicken and chilli and the Sichuan peppercorns. So this is how we get started with all that flavour. All right, so that's what we should be looking at now. I'm just waiting for my oil to heat up here and just check that it's hot enough by dipping your chopsticks in there, a wooden spoon and when you can see those little bubbles, that's when you know it's hot enough. Okay, so the technique here is a little bit different to usual. We're not going after like a kind of crispy coated chicken here. You can see the marinade's quite wet so what we're after is kind of like bonding all of that yum flavour to the outside of the chicken and getting that really golden brown kind of colour but again, because the chicken's sticky, I want you to try and put those chicken pieces in one by one because otherwise they kind of clump together in a big old mess. Now you want to come in here and start separating those chicken pieces just with some chopsticks or some tongs as they cook. You know, Dax, I reckon if I wasn't doing this, I'd happily work in a fried chicken shop. You know, I get so much joy out of frying chicken. Living a simple life. Me, chicken, hot oil. All right, so this is the kind of thing we're after here, guys. Just that really lovely golden colour and just pop that on a plate or a tray. So with this oil, I'm going to carefully tip it out. I do want to save about two tablespoons or so in the bottom of the pan for my stir-frying later. But just carefully pour that oil off. And now let's talk about chillies. So I'm going to go in here with some of these larger dried red chillies. So these guys are a little on the milder side of things. Now I want some scissors and I'm going to just cut these into little pieces. Now, both of the dried chillies I'm using in this dish are from an Asian or Chinese grocer or a Thai grocer. But what you're looking for wherever you are in the world is a set of chillies that aren't too hot that'll give you lots of colour and texture. And then you want a chilli kind of like these guys. So these are like dried bird's eye chillies. These guys are hot. So I'm going to use these whole and they are going to give us all that really like searing hot kind of spiciness. All right, so we've got our chillies. I'm going to also prep some spring onion here as well. Now I want to use some of the paler part of the spring onion, more like I would use kind of like an onion where it gets stir-fried at the beginning of the stir-fry. And then finally chop that pale part. And our green stalks here at the end, just thin them out a little bit and then cut those into batons. All right, so let's get in here in the wok. So I've got that oil nice and hot. I'm going to go in with my ginger, some garlic, that pale part of the spring onion, Sichuan peppercorn. So this is actually a really important part of this dish because you've got the hot which is the chillies obviously and then you've got the numbing which comes from these Sichuan peppercorns. Now let's go in with the chillies. Okay, so look at that colour. I mean, this is the kind of thing that just makes me so happy. We're frying chicken. We've got spicy things, Dax. Look at, look at, look at us go. You could only see the excitement on my face. I can see you guys, like Dax is like literally grinning from ear to ear behind the camera. Okay, so we want to go in with our chicken. Now we just need a little drizzle of a couple of things. Like as I said, this is not a saucy dish. It's about the fried chicken. It's about the spicy chilli. It's about the Sichuan peppercorns. So just a little dash of the soy sauce around the edge there and then just a little dash of Shaoxing wine around the edge as well. Now we're going to go in with our green tops of the spring onion. I can see, oh yeah. Spicy. I love it. Okay. All right. That, my friends, is it. Now we want to be getting this out onto a plate. What did I say? More chilli than chicken. And there you go, my friends. A very classic Sichuan chicken dish with all the chillies and all the hot and the numbing and all the things. Let me get in here though and try it out. It's going to be good. So first of all, you kind of get like salty chicken vibes going on. And then now when you bite through that chilli and you bite through the little Sichuan peppercorns and now things are getting like hot and numbing and spicy and tingly. It's like your whole mouth goes on fire. Oh my goodness. Spicy chicken. I mean, you just can't beat it.