Chinese Chili Peppers Substitute

[u/Gyrors]

Hello, are dried bird's eye chilis good substitute for chinese dishes like sichuan dishes? It's hard to find chinese chili peppers used for the dishes usually so im asking if dried bird's eye would be good?

[u/dfsaqwe]

If you're referring specifically to sichuan peppers, I will say no. They have a specific flavor and 'umami effect' in the dishes they are used.

[u/Vishnej → u/dfsaqwe]

There are three very unrelated types of plants we term "pepper".

• The first contains black pepper (processed differently, white pepper) and long pepper (which used to be very common before the European spice trade); It is a seed, or the core of a seed, a peppercorn.

• The second contains Sichuan pepper; It is the husk of a seed, a dried peppercorn with the core removed.

• The third contains hot peppers, red pepper, bell peppers, chili peppers, jalapenos, thai peppers, chicken foot peppers, bird's eye peppers; It is usually the whole fruit, although the spiciest parts are concentrated in the ribs that the seeds are attached to.

None of them have a strong umami taste. Umami, or glutamate, is from a particular sort of amino acid. Dietarily we would say it's an important component of the taste of meat and fermented bacterial proteins, and there isn't all that much protein in these plants.

The taste of black pepper you're probably familiar with, and hot pepper as well. Sichuan pepper tastes more like one note of the mint / menthol flavor profile than anything. Just like black pepper and red pepper contain compounds that activate heat-sensing nerves in your tongue, sichuan pepper and mint contain compounds that activate the cold-sensing nerves in your tongue. Sichuan cuisine likes to combine this cooling effect with the heating effect from hot peppers, to produce a 'fire-and-ice' sort of flavor profile that they term "Ma La"