Hunan Salted Chilis

If you salt some chili peppers and let them ferment for 2 weeks, they mellow out and develop a really gentle spicy flavor. Rather than a sharp kick, these salted chilis yield a nice warming flavor across the whole dish.

Salted Chilis (剁辣椒)

This is a key condiment in Hunan, where they call this 剁辣椒 (literally, chopped chilis). It goes in everything!

Red-braised winter melon (紅燒冬瓜)

Steamed Eggplant with Salted Chilis and Black beans

Steamed Pork with Rice Powder (湘山老媽夫子肉) from Hunan House in Flushing

Hollow-stem Vegetable with Salted Chilis (小椒空心菜杆) from Hunan House in Flushing

I'll post recipes for these in the coming weeks, but first you'd better get started, since they take 2 weeks to ferment!

At first, I stressed for a long time about what kind of peppers to use, but I suspect that chilies can be fully described by two axes: color and hotness. Find some red chilies that are appropriately spicy for your taste buds, and just use them. :) I bought small 1.5"-long red chili at the Hong Kong Supermarket in Chinatown. Later, I discovered red Holland chilis at the Manhattan Fruit Exchange and red cayenne peppers at the Union Square Greenmarket. I think these would all work just fine. Bigger peppers are faster to chop.

Hunan Salted Chilies

from Fuschia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province

Ingredients

• 1 pound red hot chilies
• 1/4 cup kosher salt

Method

Wash chilies thoroughly and discard any that show signs of mold or decay. Dry them thoroughly on a kitchen towel or a pile of paper towels.

Sterilize a jar and lid with boiling water or by running it through your dishwasher with a heat dry cycle. Make certain it dries thoroughly either in the air or through the dishwasher dry cycle. Do not use a paper towel or cloth to dry it directly.

Discard the stems of the chilies and chop them roughly. Do not remove the seeds. Place the chopped chilies into the jar with three tablespoons of the salt and with a sterilized chopstick or fork, stir thoroughly to combine the salt evenly among the chile bits.

When the salt is mixed in, level the top of the chilies, and sprinkle the rest of the salt over them, then tightly cap the jar with the lid and store, unopened, in a cool dark place for two weeks.

After that, it is ready to use. After opening, keep in the fridge, where it will keep for months.