The Key Pantry Ingredients You Need To Stock For Sichuan Cooking At Home

Learning to cook a new kind of cuisine is always a mix of thrilling and daunting, especially when you've just started stocking up on pantry items for wide-ranging cuisines like Chinese Sichuan. The Americanized versions of Chinese cuisine mix influences from all over the country, and one of the most influential regions is Sichuan in Southwestern China. Coming from a humid southern climate, Sichuan cuisine is known for its complex and spicy flavor combinations, many of which are probably unfamiliar to most American cooks. So Tasting Table reached out to an expert in Chinese American cooking, chef Shirley Chung, to ask for her recommendations for the essential items you need in your pantry if you want to try Sichuan cooking.

Chung gave us a number of essential Sichuan pantry ingredients to stock up on, telling us, "Sichuan peppercorn, doubanjiang (spicy fermented broad bean paste), spicy dry chili, chili flakes, sugar, and oil are some of the key ingredients of Sichuan cooking." Sichuan peppercorns are probably the most famous ingredient in this cuisine. Coming in red and green varieties they are not spicy in the traditional sense but instead induce a tingling sensation on the tongue comparable to carbonation. They are essential in creating a numbing and spicy flavor profile that is one of the backbones of Sichuan cuisine.

The spicy bean paste Shirley Chung recommended, doubanjiang, is a fermented ingredient made from broad beans and soybeans, mixed with salt, rice, and spices. Being fermented, it has big umami notes in addition to being salty, spicy, and earthy, giving it an incredible depth of flavor, and it's added to noodles, stir-fries, and soups for a savory boost. The chilis Chung mentioned, both in dried form and flakes, are Sichuan chilis, which are less spicy but have a more complex flavor than your standard pantry chili flakes. To round out Chung's list, the go-to cooking oil to stock is rapeseed oil, a relative of canola that has a high smoke point and neutral flavor and is perfect for stir-frying.

Beyond Chung's suggestions, you'll want some of the basics common to most Chinese cooking. These would include Chinese soy sauce, which is different from Japanese, Shaoxing cooking wine, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and a number of popular sauces like hoisin and oyster. Rice is obviously essential, but dried mushrooms are also great to have on hand. Many of these ingredients are increasingly available in grocery stores' international sections, but if you haven't stocked them yet, they are all widely available online. There may be a lot of new ingredients to take in, but Sichuan cuisine is one of the world's great culinary traditions, and getting to know it will be a rewarding experience for any cook.