Taste Testing Lao Gan Ma’s Chile Condiments

When I was a kid, my favorite thing to do with my grandmother was to visit the local Asian grocery store. While she shopped, we’d trot past aisles and aisles of colorful labels we couldn’t read, vacuum-sealed bags full of mysterious fungi or cartons adorned with neon, bug-eyed characters. Fast-forward 20 years, trips to the Asian grocery store are key to keeping my pantry well-stocked with things like dark soy sauce, rock sugar, hot pot fixings, hard-to-get vegetables, and frozen dumplings. If you’re lucky enough to have an Asian grocery store in your backyard — whether a local shop or a chain like 99 Ranch or H-Mart — consider stocking up on condiments from Lao Gan Ma. Lao Gan Ma is the original chile crisp before chile crisp became a front-and-center ingredient of mainstream chefs and publications like <a href="https://shop.momofuku.com/products/chili-crunch?variant=33579045322889&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0fr_BRDaARIsAABw4Ete8w1h_bT__RiFWy7CZXYSIvvxapMPJqLsQfA9VHNZN5Mcp7xPPSUaAm6qEALw_wcB" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">David Chang</a> and <a href="https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/chile-crisp" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Bon Appetit</a>. There are even premium, small-batch brands like <a href="https://yunhai.shop/products/su-chili-crisp" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Yun Hai</a> and <a href="https://flybyjing.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Fly By Jing</a> available online if you can’t make it to the market. Even though homemade chile oil is the kind of thing that has become a pandemic project— myself included as I made a version that was Whole30 compliant — I still find Lao Gan Ma to be tastier than my own versions. <a href="https://heated.medium.com/tasting-all-of-lao-gan-mas-chili-condiments-so-you-don-t-5d9ce3cc839f">Learn More</a>