Sichuan cuisine famously has 24 flavor profiles (so no, it’s not all the numbing mala), but some are admittedly more widely used than others. For example, these days it’s not overly common to see the jiaoma (椒麻味型) ‘peppercorn numbing’ flavor, which consists of a base of minced up scallion and green Sichuan pepper. ‘Strange flavor’ (怪味味型) is most commonly seen in crunchy-drinking-snack form, and by this point yellow mustard (芥末味型) is increasingly becoming a historical ingredient in Chinese cookery (one day, we’ll need to dive into the oddness of yellow mustard in China).

But there’s also the ‘homestyle’ flavor profile, which should, I think, should maybe be just as synonymous with Sichuan food as the firey mala. It consists of

• Pixian Doubanjiang, Sichuan chili bean paste

• Soy sauce

… and honestly not all that much else. Depending on the recipe you might see a bit of Sichuan pepper, or douchi, or (often) green garlic. But that’s the core.

It makes it for a nice Sichuan flavor to execute outside of China, as it’s pretty dead simple on the sourcing front. You’ve already got soy sauce, you just need some Pixian Doubanjiang – which is super easy to grab online, pretty much everywhere. 

In about two week’s time we’re planning a big dive into Sichuan Pixian Doubanjiang, particularly how to use those fancier 1 year and 3 year fermented packs. A discussion on the homestyle flavor profile will be included in that post, but on the video side of things we’ve got three recipes out now. (again, I know some of y’all primarily follow us here, and I didn’t want to keep you out of the loop… but didn’t want to annoy you with an email).