Chili oil

We use up chili oil really fast, so we thought it’d be more cost effective to make our own batch. Past chili oil attempts haven’t turned out particularly well (basically red oil that doesn’t taste like anything…), but I did more research this time 🙂

This recipe combines various online chili oil recipes plus everything on the ingredients list of the last commercial chili oil we bought (Blank Slate Kitchen has great chili oil). We get our Sichuan spices from Mala Market.

  • 1/2 cup Sichuan chili flakes (spicy Korean chili flakes is an okay substitute)
  • 1 tsp Chinese five spice powder (substitute with any or all of: whole star anise, a cinnamon stick, black peppercorns, cardamom, and cloves)
  • 1 tsp freshly toasted and ground Sichuan peppercorn powder (or 1 Tbsp toasted whole peppercorns)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 inch ginger, sliced thickly
  • 1/3 cup minced shallot (substitute with green or white onion)
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 cups cooking oil (peanut, canola, avocado, etc)
  • 1/4 cup sesame oil
  1. Put chili flakes, five spice, peppercorn powder, and salt in a heat-proof jar.
  2. Fry shallot, garlic, ginger, and any whole spices (cloves, etc) in cooking oil until crispy. Remove the ginger and any whole spices. Heat oil to 275°F. Pour into the jar of chili flakes – they should sizzle.
  3. Cool to room temp. Add sesame oil. Store in fridge for maximum shelf life.
  4. When the oil is gone, you can reuse the sediment (chili flakes, etc). Just pour more hot oil into the jar.

You can add other delicious things to your oil, like fermented black beans (douchi) or peanuts or sesame seeds.

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