Spicy Chinese food (and 12 other mouth-watering dishes that you should try)
I have to admit I'm a bit of a coward when it comes to spicy food. But I'm also the type to try everything once, even if it means guzzling ice water afterwards, so let's take a look at spicy Chinese food, starting with 12 of the best dishes you should try.To get more news about spicy chinese food, you can visit shine news official website.
The best spicy Chinese dishes to try
1. Hotpot
Hotpot can be found all over China. The spiciest hotpot comes from Chongqing, and if you can stand the heat, it's surprisingly tasty.
You'll need to go to a restaurant in a group, as eating hotpot is a communal experience. Basically, you and your friends dip your favourite raw meats, seafood, tofu and vegetables into a bubbling pot until they're cooked through.
2. Mapo tofu
Made with tofu, ground pork, a spicy bean chilli sauce and Sichuan peppercorns, mapo tofu comes from Sichuan province (also known as Szechuan).
3. Hot and sour glass noodles
This spicy snack from Chongqing is one of the cheapest entries on this list, made with sweet potato flour glass noodles in a soup of soy beans, vinegar, chilli paste and chilli oil.
4. Dan Dan Noodles
Made with ground pork, raw garlic, ground peanuts and a hot chilli black bean paste, authentic dan dan noodles are made with ground pork.
The name dan dan comes from the Mandarin expression 'biǎn dān' (扁担), which means 'carrying stick'. In ancient China, merchants carried noodles on poles and then sold them on the street.
5. Saliva chicken
This spicy Chinese dish has a slightly unappetising name due to the taste of the dish: it's boiled chicken in a chilli and sesame oil sauce that contains 10 spices and sauces.
6. Er Kuai Spicy Chicken
If you go to Yunnan Province, you can try these savoury rice dumplings. They are steamed and stir-fried with chilli peppers and deep-fried chicken.
It may sound a bit strange, and not many people outside of the province have tried it, but the result is incredibly tasty, if at the same time shockingly spicy.
7. Gan guo
All you have to do is choose your meat, tofu and vegetables and the dish is brought to your table, seasoned with ginger, garlic, spring onions and red and green chillies.
This is one of the hottest dishes around, and it's far less oily than some of the spicier dishes you'll find in Sichuan. So it may be more to your taste if oil upsets your stomach.
8. Red braised pork
This dish was reportedly a favourite of Chairman Mao, so there are strict rules about how it's made and what goes into it.
It comes from Hunan province and features red braised pork. But don't expect this version to be like braised pork in other parts of China, as it's really a celebration of the locals' love of chillies.
9. Hot and sour fish soup
This is one of the more obscure dishes and comes from the southern province of Guizhou (for a summary of all the Chinese provinces, click here).
It's a delicious fish with a broth made from chilli oil, tomatoes and local red chillies, and it actually contains some local fermented vegetables for an added health kick.
10. Hunan Spicy Beef
Hunan province is the second largest supplier of beef in China, so of course it has a spicy beef dish: Hunan spicy beef is stir-fried with fresh and deep-fried chilli peppers and is deliciously tender and burns all the way to the bottom.
11. Steamed fish head with chilli
This is a bit of a strange entry, and to be honest I couldn't eat it myself, mainly because I don't like my food to stare at me while I'm eating it.'Duo jiao yu tou' comes from Hunan province and features lots of chilli in a steamed fish head.
12. Kung Pao Chicken
A traveler's favorite because it's often found in Chinese restaurants overseas, KungPao chicken can make you sweat if you eat all the chilli on the plate.
But if you're good with chopsticks, you can easily separate the chicken from the chillies, which means the dish will sizzle less. This is something I did a lot of when I was in China!