- Names: Hunan food, Xiang cuisine
- Location: Hunan Province
- Distinctives: spicy, favouring sautéing, stir-frying, steaming, and smoking
Hunan cuisine is one China’s eight ancient categories of cuisines, and is typically known for its spicy and incredibly hot flavouring (this leads to a debate as to which is spicier: Hunan or Sichuan cuisine). Hunan cuisine and Sichuan cuisine do indeed share many things in common: both cuisines are known for their fiery cooking, and both use chili peppers to the extreme. If you ask your average Chinese, they would generally conclude than the food in Hunan is actually hotter than the food in Sichuan (yes, this is actually a topic of serious debate in China). The Sichuanese typically use pepper corn that numbs the mouth, whilst the Hunanese tend to use vinegar along with the peppers. In the debate of the spice, the Hunanese will argue that using vinegar will stimulate the taste buds, unlocking a wide range of flavours and rich variety of ingredients and spices.
In addition to a strong reliance on chili peppers, Hunan cuisine also adds garlic and shallots to the hot mix (this is what sets it apart from Sichuan cuisine). The Hunan locals also love to use as many different types of smoked and cured ingredients in cooking.
Seasonings Used
Perhaps the wet hot summers help encourage the hot food craze in Hunan. According to Chinese wisdom, the extra heat of peppers helps to balance any lingering cold. As a source of heat, Hunan cuisine is open to all options, from hot peppers, green onions, shallots, garlic, ginger, spicy oil, and even cinnamon. It may come as a surprise that some of the food is Hunan packs a sweetness: honey is enjoyed in some dishes, and sugar is sometimes used as well.
Special Cooking Techniques
Amongst all the various cooking technique used in Hunan, stewing is perhaps the greatest regional speciality here. Stewing with sauce, stewing with water, stewing with clear broth or stewing with milky broth – all goes well in Hunan. Stir frying, braising, curing, steaming and frying are also commonly used techniques.
Hunan Cuisine: Staple Dishes
Steamed Fish Head with Chopped Chili. This famous Hunan cuisine dish is spicy (of course), and is primarily made with tender fish meat. The accompanying sauce of chopped chili, soy sauce, ginger, shallot and garlic is addictive.
Steamed Preserved Meat. Cured pork, cured chicken, cured fish or other preserved meat are steamed and then enjoyed with chicken soup. This simple dish is rich in taste, and just salty enough.
Chairman Mao’s Red Braised Pork. This dish has a complicated (yet delightful) palate of spicy, salty and sweet. Unmistakably dark red in appearance, the pork is half fat and half lean, and is cut into large cubes. The meat literally melts in your mouth.
Fried Pork with Chili. Fried pork with chili is a popular home-style dish in Hunan, and with such aromatic and spicy pork it is easy to see why. Larger green peppers are the spice of choice for this one.
Lobster. The Hunan style lobster has become a somewhat nation-wide craze. These bright red lobsters are always fresh and spicy, and more often-than-not enjoyed with a few rounds of beer…
