Sichuan Food: Spicy, and Beyond.

What’s the basic features of Sichuan food? Spicy? That’s most people would say. However, It’s really not just spicy. Bold flavor, spicy choices and a variety of taste would more accurately describe Sichuan food. It includes sweet, sour, salty and different types of spicy flavors. Sweet dishes include the famous fished flavored pork slices in the photo below, which I will elaborate in later posts.

Fish flavored pork slices; Photo courtesy of meishichina.com.

Sichuan-style food has originated about 3000 years ago, earlier than Qing Dynasty, when most part of China was unified for the first time in ancient history. It has various complicated tastes and dishes, making up a unique Cuisine.

Sichuan is a southwest province in China, and mostly Sichuan food refers to the food in the geographical area and may also include Chongqing city area, which used to be part of Sichuan but is now a municipality directly under central government.

Sichuan province is located at Sichuan Basin, which is surrounded by a huge mountain (Qing Ling) on the north and Tibet Plateau on the left. Its geographical environment has provided opportunities for the growth of various quality spices including chili, pepper, cinnamon, fennel, octagon etc. Sichuan Chili and pepper are quite famous for its bold flavors. A lot of people would agree that the tasty Sichuan food comes from its ingredients, especially these good spices. Also, the fact that Sichuan people historically enjoy spicy food is related to its high humidity for the most of the year.

Photo courtesy of Planetware.com

Sichuan cuisine probably has the most complicated spicy flavor in China, and maybe in the whole world, because of the complicated combination of spicy flavors and other flavors. For example, sour spicy is pretty popular in parts of Sichuan province, and other regions may prefer hot spicy or chili spicy. It’s hard to say how many types of spicy flavors do Sichuan food has. A very good way to clear it out is to taste the dishes one by one, and you will get a sense of the differences and maybe try to categorize them.

Here is a short Youtube video that explains the basics of Sichuan food. It’s a very good introduction.

Starting next week, I will introduce some famous Sichuan dishes, and you’ll gradually understand the cooking method and various flavors of Sichuan food by knowing these dishes. You can leave comments to let me know what dishes you are interested at.