It's snowing again. *!!#$%^&@?@&%^!* As if the 100 inches of snow lounging outside my kitchen window weren't sufficient reminder of winter's unwelcome squatting rights.
Time to buffer the cold with a little heat. Chili spice is a versatile ally: we eat spicy food in the wintertime to stay warm, and we eat spicy food in the summertime to stay cool. It's science.
At home, that is, at my parents' in Wisco, there is always a supply of homemade chili oil in the fridge. My father is a chili head and garnishes just about everything with a heaping dollop. At the Guo residence, it's not drink for drink with Dad, but spice for spice, and he always wins, face shiny with sweat, eyes glazed with victory. My father once told me a story from his childhood. One winter in China was so brutally cold that his friend rubbed the inside of a raw chili on his face to stay warm. "We all told him not to, but he couldn't stand the cold anymore. He was actually quite warm and comfortable outside during the day, but the burning sensation was unbearable when he came inside in the evening!" Daddy giggled, reaching for another spoonful of chili.
At any given moment, there are 5 to 10 chili advocates forming a delegation in my pantry. Gochujang, Cholula, spicy miso, chipotles en adobo, pickled serranos, ghost pepper powder, and of course the king, Sriracha. Each has its appropriate time and place, but none of them can compare to the nutty, mellow, prolonged burn of homemade chili oil.
So what happens when you rub raw chili on your skin to stay warm? My father's friend was in agony for hours, and no amount of washing could alleviate the burn. Out of context, this is a hilarious anecdote, and one that never fails to set my father chuckling for a few good minutes. But it is a light-hearted vignette lifted from a much darker tapestry.
In 1969, Chairman Mao sent my father to work on a farm in the northernmost region of China, near the Siberian border. Swept along Mao's megalomaniacal Cultural Revolution and sent to Heilongjiang Province as part of a massive reeducation movement called Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside (上山下鄉運動), he left behind, in Beijing, an invalid grandmother, a mother under house arrest soon to be exiled from her family, a father forced to perform hard labor after being tortured for nine months by university Red Guards, and a terrified younger sister. He had just turned 16 years old.
It was there, on the farm in Dongbei, where winter squats for 9 months and temperatures reach -40C (that's -40F), that my father and his teenage buddies planted turnips, wheat, and soybeans in lieu of attending high school, playing football, chasing girls. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles from their family, underfed, underclothed, uneducated, these were the circumstances of their most formative years.
You would never know what my father has endured. His humor is subtle yet boisterous. His friendship is enduring, his loyalty Sicilian. His bottomless capacity for love and kindness and laughter is a testament to his strength, his will, his survival.
He told me the tale of the "Great Chili Oil Debacle" when I was probably his age in the story. Now whenever I replenish my stock, I think of his friend, who thought that hot chili balm was his greatest ally against the winter cold.
THE RECIPE. Many years have I fried chili oil; wise to heed my advice you would be.
The RULES OF CHILI OIL I give you (hmmmmmm):
- Quality ingredients. Chili oil = dried chili + oil. The fewer the ingredients, the more naked the flavors, so don't cheat on quality here.
- Shop smart. Buy dried chili flakes in bulk at your local ethnic food store. $1.99 for 6oz. Don't go overpaying McCormick
- Vent it. It's gonna get smoky; you WILL smell like fried chili oil. For some, this is the perfect mating call. For the rest of you, turn that vent on high or do it on the grill range.
- Wok it up. Ideally, you want to use a large wok to fry because it provides both a large surface contact area and high sides for mobility and splatter guard. If you don't have one, I would use the largest pot in your arsenal that's at least 3 inches deep. But get a wok. It's the most versatile pan I own.
- Don't use olive oil. You want a light, flavorless oil that won't compete with the chili flavor. I like peanut or saff/sunflower.
- WEAR YOUR RUBBERS. Rules of the gentlemen's club apply, my spicy friends: look but don't touch! You touch a speck of chili flake. You touch your eye, your mouth, anywhere . . . It's over. I keep a stash of disposable medical gloves on hand.
- NEVER STOP STIRRING. From the moment you start frying, do not stop stirring and moving the chili around. Stirring prevents burning. Motion yields chili potion. Whatever mantra you have to tell yourself, because this can go from toasted delicious to blackened char in one second flat.
- DO NOT INHALE!! I cannot stress this enough. Do not breathe deeply around the dry chili flakes. You will regret it. Do not breathe AT ALL in the direction of the wok whilst frying, At best you will singe your eyeballs and choke ungracefully; at worst, you could actually send yourself to the hospital. Breathe away from the chili always.
THE FRY:
- Dry toast the chili flakes in the wok on high heat. NO OIL. Constant stirring. You want to make sure that every flake gets toasted without burning. You will know you've reached optimal toasting when the flakes smell nutty and the chili powder residue at the bottom of the wok turns black (when the powder burns, the flakes are close behind). ~1 minute for me, but this depends on your pot and flame.
- Turn down flame to medium. Start adding oil 1/4C at a time. (Constant stirring!) How much oil you add is up to you. Do you want more of a dry chili topping or more of a flavored oil? Add in increments, letting the flakes absorb the oil in between. You can always add more oil to thin it out, but you can't cook off excess. For my 6oz. package, I used ~1.5C oil.
- Turn flame back up to high and keep stirring. You want constant motion and equal distribution, which is why I like the wok. You can push food up the sides of the wok to let them cool while others get their moment to shine in the oil bath, then rotate. I let my chili oil come to a gentle simmer for a minute or two. Obviously if your chili-to-oil ratio is high, don't do this. All told, ~5 minutes of frying in oil.
- The color will turn from bright red to a dark crimson, like dried blood. If it's veering toward brown, you've gone too far. Keep in mind that it will continue to fry after you take it off the flame.
- Cool, bottle, slather away (on your food, not your body).