How to Chinese Cold Dish-ify [Anything]

A 101 look into the world of Chinese cold dishes, with a focus on the Sichuan province.

• Click here to jump to the Toasted Chili Chicken recipe

• Click here to jump to the Sweet Sour Daikon recipe

• Chick here to jump to the Fish Fragrant Lotus Root recipe

Today, we wanted to give you a formula of sorts for how to whip up some Chinese cold dishes – liangbancai – sometimes translated as ‘salads’.

These are – generally speaking – the kinds of dishes that are intended to fill out a meal. They’ll be one element of a traditional banquet in order to lend the meal a diversity of temperatures and textures, but in a home cooking context they’re the sort of thing that can make the cook’s life easy. All you need to do is know the formula for the sauce you want to dress your ingredient with, and the rest is often as easy as boil-and-mix.

Of course, there’s a… metric ton of different sauces and flavors throughout China that can do the job. Liangbancai are really more of a ‘category’ of food than a ‘dish’ per se: like, there’s not going to be all that much overlap between Cantonese fish skin salad in Guangdong and the salad-like (perennial foreigner favorite) of Dabancai up in the Northwest. Because it’s just too broad of a topic to even try to hope to cover comprehensively, in this post we’ll zero in on the Sichuan province and cover three possible cold dish flavors. In the future we’ll try to cover other provinces as well (or even just more within Sichuan too, because there’s way more than just three flavor profiles).

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Shaoban (烧拌), Toasted Chili Flavor

Chili oil-based cold dishes are practically synonymous with Sichuan, and they tend to come in two basic varieties: with and without vinegar. We covered the vinegar based sort before in our previous Chinese Drinking Food video (written recipe over here), so this time we wanted to cover the latter.

Classically, the flavor profile we’re covering here was referred to as Shaoban (烧拌) - toasted chili mixed - but these days the term often specifically refers to two specific old school dishes: Shaoban Winter Bamboo Shoot (烧拌冬笋) and Shaoban Wild Rice Stem (烧拌茭白). These dishes were also traditionally prepared by ash-roasting them first, which is potentially how the flavor got its name.

The dressing is as follows:

• Sichuan Chili Oil (红油), 30g, ~2 tbsp

• Toasted Chili Powder (煳辣椒末), 3g, ~1 tbsp

• Soy sauce (生抽), 10g, ~2 tsp

• Toasted sesame oil (麻油), 10g, ~2 tsp

• Salt, 1/8 tsp

• MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp

In the video, we decided to dress this over shredded chicken.

Example Recipe: Shaoban Shredded Chicken (烧拌鸡丝)

A couple notes for the recipe below.

Note #1: In place of the Sichuan Chili oil called for above, we’ll be using our quick-and-dirty Lao Gan Ma-based substitute. We wanted to keep this recipe approachable, avoiding that recipe-inside-of-a-recipe-inside-of-a-recipe rabbit hole. But do use a homemade Sichuan chili oil if you have some around.

Note #2: For the toasted chili powder, we’ll be pounding some up from scratch. That said, this is also the type of product that you can simply buy. Thai Prik Bon are basically the same thing and seem to be quite internationally available. Something smoked like a Chipotle chili flake would be slightly different but also tasty, I think.

Note #3: For the toasted chili powder, we’ll be pounding up a bit extra, as pounding only 2-3 chili peppers is a little awkward. Nice ingredient to have around nonetheless.

Note #4: For the shredded chicken, we’ll be poaching a whole leg in the Sichuan style. That said, we tested this once using some Thai-style grilled chicken from the street (a benefit of living in Bangkok), and that also worked great. So if you’re the type of person with one of those COSTCO rotisserie chicken habits (or a weekly roast chicken habit), go nuts - I think that’d be perfectly tasty here too, so long as it didn’t go nuts with the western herbs.

Ingredients

• Chicken Leg, 1 leg. ~375g uncooked. We’ll be aiming for ~300g of shredded chicken in the end.

• For the chicken poaching liquid:

  Ginger, ~1 inch. Smashed.

  Scallion, ~2 sprigs.

  Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ~1 tbsp.

• To make the 1 tbsp of toasted chili flakes:

  Medium dried chilis - e.g. Tiensin, Chili de Arbol, Chili Japones (干辣椒), Cayennes, Heaven Facing (朝天椒) - one handful or ~10 chilis. Again, this will make more than you need - you’ll only need 1 tbsp of powder for the final sauce.

• For the quick-and-dirty Lao Gan Ma-based chili oil:

  Oil, 1 tbsp

  Lao Gan Ma Chili Crisp (老干妈香辣脆油辣椒), 1 tbsp

  Red, fragrant chili powder - e.g. Qinjiao (秦椒), Kashmiri, or Gochugaru, 1/2 tbsp

  Spicy chili powder - e.g. cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp. You could also potentially use a bit of the toasted chili above here if you like.

• The remainder of the dressing from above:

  Soy sauce (生抽), 10g, ~2 tsp

  Toasted sesame oil (麻油), 10g, ~2 tsp

  Salt, 1/8 tsp

  MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp

• Optional: cilantro, to mix in or garnish

Process

Add the ginger, scallion, and wine to a pot of bubbling water. Lower the flame to medium to keep the water at a light boil. Add in the chicken leg, poach uncovered for 15 minutes, or until a chopstick can poke right through. Shut off the flame and let the chicken sit in the hot water for at least 30 minutes, or up to 60.

After that time, remove the chicken. Strain, and allow to dry for ~15 minutes. As this is drying, we can sort the toasted chili powder and the chili oil.

For the toasted chili powder, add the chilis to a dry wok, and toasted over a medium-low flame until they’re just barely beginning to scorch, 8-10 minutes. Transfer to a mortar and pound into a powder.

For the quick chili oil, add all the ingredients together and cook over a medium-low flame until fragrant, 1-2 minutes.

At this point the chicken should be dry to the touch. Shred the leg, including the skin. Add to a large mixing bowl. Add in one tablespoon of the toasted chili flakes, the quick chili oil, and the remainder of the dressing. Mix well.

Top with cilantro, or mix in if you prefer (or skip).

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Tangcu, simple sweet-sour flavor (糖醋)

Not much complicated going on here. The dressing will be as follows:

• Rice Vinegar (米醋) -or- White Rice Vinegar (白醋), 20g, ~4 tsp

• Granulated Sugar, 15g, ~3.5 tsp

• Scallion whites, 15g, ~2 sprigs. Cut lengthwise into slivers.

• Toasted Sesame Oil (麻油), 10g, ~2 tsp

• Salt, 1/8 tsp

• MSG (味精), 1/4 tsp

Note that in China, the basic ‘white’ vinegar is roughly 3.5% acetic acid, to Heinz’s 5% in the west. You could use a rice vinegar (like, think the Japanese sort), or alternatively water down the Heinz a touch.

Example Recipe: Sweet Sour Daikon (糖醋萝卜)

Ingredients:

• Daikon (萝卜), ~275g

• Salt, ~1/8 tsp. To purge the daikon.

• Simple sweet-sour dressing from above:

  Rice Vinegar (米醋) -or- White Rice Vinegar (白醋), 20g, ~4 tsp

  Granulated Sugar, 15g, ~3.5 tsp

  Scallion whites, 15g, ~2 sprigs. Cut lengthwise into slivers.

  Toasted Sesame Oil (麻油), 10g, ~2 tsp

  Salt, 1/8 tsp

  MSG (味精), 1/4 tsp

• Optional: fried or roasted peanuts. For a bit of crunch.

Process:

Peel the daikon, and then slice into sticks (roughly 3mm x 3mm x 5cm). Add to a bowl, then mix in the 1/8 tsp salt. Let it sit for ~15 minutes to purge.

You should notice that the Daikon’s released a solid bit of water. Rinse well under running water, drain, and then give it a squeeze. Let it sit in a strainer until you’re ready to mix.

Julienne the scallion whites (save the greens for another use). Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar.

In a mixing bowl, mix the Daikon with the scallion and dressing, optionally tossing a couple peanuts in for a bit of crunch.

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Fish Fragrant (鱼香)

Fish fragrant is (obviously) an incredibly famous flavor profile within Sichuan cooking, that - equally famously - involves no fish. Probably the two most well known dishes are Fish Fragrant Pork Slivers (鱼香肉丝) and Fish Fragrant Eggplant (鱼香茄子), both dishes that we covered before.

Now, classically, the building block of the fish fragrant flavor profile is this stuff, pickled Erjingtiao chilis (泡二荆条):

Or, perhaps even more classically, a pickled chili called ‘fish pickled chili’ (鱼泡椒), which pickles chili peppers in with a bit of river fish - and might just be how this flavor profile got its name.

Unfortunately, this is an ingredient that’s incredibly difficult to source outside of Sichuan - like, in both Shenzhen and Shunde, we’d have to purchase ours at the special wholesale markets that the restaurants would shop at. The aforementioned super old recipe of ours does use pickled erjingtiao chilis if you do happen to be curious about that approach.

Luckily, the most important thing about a fish fragrant isn’t the pickled chilis themselves, but how you balance them. A fish fragrant sauce should be the following:

1. A little bit spicy

2. A little bit sweet

3. Moderately sour

4. Contain a bunch of aromatics, particularly garlic and scallion

To that end, you’ll see different approaches for how to get there. Once popular choice is to use a touch of spicy chilis for heat, up the vinegar quantity a bit, and add in some Chili Bean Paste, Pixian Doubanjiang (郫县豆瓣酱), for color.

For us, our approach is centered around Lao Gan Ma Pickled Chili, or alternatively Hunan Chopped Chilis. These are lacto-fermented chili sauces from the Guizhou and Hunan provinces respectively - they’ve got some fermented depth to them, but they’re still more on the ‘salty’ side than the ‘sour’ side, so we’ll also be similarly upping the vinegar to compensate. In the end, we do this that this does end up a bit closer than the chili bean paste-based approaches.

So, our dressing will be as follows:

• Lao Gan Ma Pickled Chili (老干妈风味糟辣剁椒) -or- Hunan Chopped Chilis (剁椒), 25g, ~1.5 tbsp. Minced.

• Dark Chinese Vinegar (香醋/陈醋), preferably Baoning vinegar (保宁醋), 15g, ~1 tbsp.

• Soy sauce (生抽), 10g, ~2 tsp

• Granulated sugar, 20g, ~4 tsp

• Scallion, 20g, ~2 sprigs. Sliced.

• Garlic, 25g, ~5 cloves. Finely minced.

• Ginger, 5g, ~1/2 inch. Finely minced.

• Salt, 1/4 tsp

• MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp

Example Recipe: Fish Fragrant Mixed Deep Fried Lotus Root (鱼香拌藕丁)

So again, the most famous way to find a Fish Fragrant is in stir fry form, but liangban form is also something that exists as well. The most classic Fish Fragrant cold dish is probably this guy, Liangban Deep Fried Pigeon Pea (鱼香豌豆):

Unfortunately, while dried pigeon peas seem to be the type of thing that’s pretty available around the world… this dish uses fresh pigeon pea - and ingredient that’s tough for us to find in Thailand, and likely difficult for you to find as well.

So instead, we decided to whip up (something conceptually… adjacent?) in the form of deep fried lotus root. Not the same thing obviously, but quite tasty as well and also goes great with a fish fragrant sauce.

Ingredients:

• Lotus Root, 500g. Peeled.

• Cornstarch, to coat the lotus root, ~1/4 cup

• Oil, for deep frying

• Dressing from above:

  Lao Gan Ma Pickled Chili (老干妈风味糟辣剁椒) -or- Hunan Chopped Chilis (剁椒), 25g, ~1.5 tbsp. Minced.

  Dark Chinese Vinegar (香醋/陈醋), preferably Baoning vinegar (保宁醋), 15g, ~1 tbsp

  Soy sauce (生抽), 10g, ~2 tsp

  Granulated sugar, 20g, ~4 tsp

  Scallion, 20g, ~2 sprigs. Sliced.

  Garlic, 25g, ~5 cloves. Finely minced.

  Ginger, 5g, ~1/2 inch. Finely minced.

Process:

Peel the lotus root, then slice into ~1/2 inch pieces. Soak in water for ~10 minutes to get off a touch of the surface starch, then drain.

Once the lotus root feels mostly dry, toss in a large bowl together with the cornstarch. Add enough so that the lotus root pieces can get dusted evenly.

To deep fry, get a pot or wok of oil up to ~165C, then add the lotus root. This will lower the temperature, which is ok and expected. Fry for about ten minutes, or until the lotus has expelled much of its liquid and the exterior is beginning to get a touch golden brown. Remove, and let the oil drain off.

Mix the dressing together (it may take a hot second of mixing for the scallion to wilt). Add in a mixing bowl with the deep fried lotus root, mix well.