I always have chile oil in a jar in the pantry. My mother makes her own, and my recipe is an adaptation of hers.
Ingredients & tools
You’ll need:
- at least 12 whole dried chilis
- at least 1/2 cup of neutral oil
- large mixing bowl
- container for storing chili oil
- cast iron pan
- blade grinder / mortar & pestle
- one chopstick
Sourcing, tools, etc.
Start with whole dried chilis, not chili flakes. I live in California, and I prefer Mexican dried chilis (those used for Mexican cooking, like chile de arbol), despite making a Chinese recipe.
Don’t let sourcing difficulties hold you back though, any whole dried chili at all can be made into a chili oil.
I look for ‘fresh’ dried chilis. Freshness is an interesting concept when it comes to something dried–I mean a chile that has a pliable quality to it still, and it isn’t so brittle that it feels like dust waiting to happen in your hand. If you live somewhere with hotter summers than I do, you can grow your own peppers and dry them yourself to make chile oil.
Personally, I’ve been on a roll with Casa Ruiz’s arbol chiles, and I’ve had good results with Penzey’s Sannam Chilis as well.
You’ll also want something to grind your toasted chilis with. I use a cheap blade grinder. Something like this serves nicely if you don’t already have one. Of course, you can always use a mortar and pestle but it’s really not necessary for this recipe. How fine you grind the peppers is up to you, but enjoy a toothiness to my chile oils–a fine dust is a little too much grinding.
Technique
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Remove stems from dried chiles. While doing this, you can shake out any loose seeds if you’d like a slightly less spicy chile oil. I don’t usually bother.
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Heat a well seasoned cast iron pan on the stove. Do not use any oil. Toast the chiles on both sides until they smell fragrant. Sometimes they blister! That’s a good thing! If they burn and blacken, start over, or remove the ones that are burnt. A little bit of burnt pepper is OK, but too much creates an acrid oil that you’re not going to enjoy eating. It takes around 2 minutes on each side for the peppers to toast, but watch carefully, peppers vary in toasting time. I usually flip them over individually with chopsticks, a spatula is too coarse of a cooking tool for this job.
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Remove chiles from the pan as soon as they’re toasted. If some are ready sooner than others, remove those first! No rules here except get the chiles toasted and keep ‘em from burning.
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Let the chiles cool a little and then grind them in a cheapo blade grinder.
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Put the ground peppers in your mixing bowl and set to the side.
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Return the pan to the stove. Heat some neutral high heat oil (grapeseed, canola) in the cast iron pan. The oil is heated through when a chopstick placed in the oil looks as if the oil is ‘bubbling’ around it. When you reached this point, pour the oil over your ground chiles in the mixing bowl. Marvel at the sizzle and smell. Let cool a bit and then pour into your container.
The chile oil is ready a few hours after made, but tastes better as it ages. It keeps indefinitely at room temperature if you use clean utensils when serving it.
eat with:
- noodles
- on soups
- on daal
- as part of a dipping sauce for dumplings
- as part of other sauces for stir frying and other types of cooking
- drizzled on pickles
- on cheese
- …
This describes an ice cream base used at tEp’s rush
events around 2008 to 2011. It’s basically a really thick
creme anglaise, similar to
what you might find at most nth-wave ice cream shops in Boston.
Make the Custard
- In a heavy-bottomed pot, simmer until fully dissolved:
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 cup whole milk
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1/8 tsp fine sea salt
- Remove from heat.
- Whisk 6 egg yolks in a metal bowl. Still whisking, slowly add 1/3 of the
heated cream mixture to yolks.
- Transfer yolk mixture to pot, slowly heating at medium-low until the custard
coats the back of a spoon (i.e., heat it up to 170F).
Too hot or too long and you’ll have sweet scrambled eggs. Yields ~4 cups total
and can be made and refrigerated ahead of time.
Flavor the Custard
You can split a large quantity of ice cream base into different batches for
flavoring:
- Vanilla (Pods and extract)
- Green Tea (Matcha powder)
- Chocolate (cocoa powder, chunked or melted dark chocolate)
- Etc.
Freeze the Custard
Use a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer on a low-speed setting, pouring a slow, steady,
patient stream of liquid nitrogen from the dewer until you have ice cream. Avoid
freezing it completely solid, as you can accidentally destroy the Kitchen-Aid
motor.
Addendum: Allergic to Milk? Vegan?
Of course, not everyone is into animal proteins. The Homemade Vegan Pantry
says:
- Blend until creamy:
- 1 cup cashews
- 1/2 cups water
- Blend into cashew cream:
- 1 (13 1/2 oz) can of full-fat coconut milk
- 1/2 cup sugar.
Makes 4 cups total.
Note that you may need either a Vitamix, a strainer, or 24-hour soak of the
cashews to get a smooth texture.
See also:
This is a recipe for the lemongrass-chile sauce similar to what’s available at
Mau in SF. It’s modified from Viet World Kitchen’s recipe
online.
- Mince:
- 30g garlic
- 30g shallots
- 90g lemongrass
- 10g fresh Thai bird chilis, deseeded
- 30g dried red chili
- 2 tbsp dried shrimp, rehydrated in hot water
- In a wok, start 1 cup of grapeseed oil at medium low and add the garlic. Once
frothing, lower heat to low (a gentle tremble) until the garlic sinks (about 5
minutes). Repeat with shallots and lemongrass (~10 minutes).
- Add dried shrimp, fresh, and dried chiles, frying each separately for 5
minutes each.
- Add:
- 2 1/2 teaspoons sugar
- 3 tablespoons fish sauce
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- Cook for a few minutes more. Cool and food process.
-Buro
We frequently refer to any olive oil-citrus-based chili sauce as ‘Piri Piri’,
even if the eponymous chilies aren’t involved. This recipe uses
lactofermented Habaneros, which have great depth, but any other hot pepper could
work just as well.
Food process until fully emulsified:
- 5 - 8 pickled habaneros, stemmed and deseeded
- 2 - 3 garlic cloves
- 5 tbsp olive oil
- 4 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
- 1 tsp salt
-Buro
For hikes and backpacking trips! It’s based on this recipe. We
frequently use huā jiāo, but really, lots of
flavor profiles can work here.
For each 4 1/2 cups raw almonds:
- Dissolve in 1 1/2 tsp salt in 1 1/2 tbsp boiling water.
- Mix/coat almonds with salt water.
- Spread out on silpat on a baking sheet.
- Cook for 15-20 minutes (until browned inside and out) at 375F, stirring
halfway through for even cooking.
- Mix/coat almonds with 2 tbsp olive oil, coating with additional salt, sugar,
and seasonings as desired.
- Spread out to cool for at least an hour.
Do not burn the almonds! 375F might simply be too hot.
-Buro
I make this soup at least 2-3x a year, especially when it’s cold or foggy out. Can be doubled or quadrupled for a crowd (or your freezer).
Adapted from beef / leek / barley soup recipe on Smitten Kitchen
Ingredients:
- 4 meaty short ribs
- 4 leeks, sliced thinly cross-wise
- 4-6 cloves garlic, minced coarsley
- 2 carrots chopped coarsley
- 4 ribs celery chopped coarsley
- 1 cup barley
- 12 cups water / chicken stock / beef stock (I frequently use some better than bouillon here)
-
Sear beef short ribs in oil in a cast iron (or other) pan until each side is dark brown.
-
Once seared on each side, add to pot with rest of ingredients. Simmer on low for 4-5 hours or until the short ribs fall away from the bone entirely and the barley is soft.
At this point, salt to taste. Don’t salt earlier, or your soup won’t come together the same way (it’ll be hard for the beef to soften). If I’m making it for a crowd, I’ll take the ribs out and chop them coarsley as the sinew on the back edge of the short rib can be hard to chew. It’s possible to overcook it and completely remove all flavor from the short rib, so watch out for that too.
Beans, potatoes, more carrots, etc. are great things to add to this stew. The leeks are critical, but other things can be ommitted if you’re missing them.
