Category Archives: Cooking

Okara crackers: a cooking experiment with leftovers

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After making my soybean milk, I had the okara left over, which is the soybean pulp remaining from straining all the soy milk out. With soy beans because they are water soluble, the majority of the protein goes into the milk; the leftover pulp just has a little residual protein and a lot of leftover fiber. So I didn’t want to let this go to waste. Culturally in China and Japan, nothing goes to waste, so this leftover okara is usually blended into soups, stews, or even made into a batter or dough to make fritters or pancakes. I personally hate waste, so I wanted to use this up: so much good dietary fiber! I took some of the leftover okara and blended it into my breakfast smoothie one day. Another day, I spooned some into my yogurt with a little black sesame paste and fruit for a mid-afternoon treat. I still had about half a cup left, so I decided to try using it for homemade okara crackers. I initially thought it would be a good school snack to pack for Kaia.

The base recipe I put together based on a ChatGPT suggestion was the okara, a little whole wheat flour, corn meal, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, freshly grated parmesan, a tablespoon of olive oil, and black pepper. I mixed and then kneaded it into a pliable dough, let it rest for 20 minutes. Then I rolled it out and cut it into 2mm thick 1.5-inch rounds (love my biscuit cutters!). I relied on ChatGPT too much, though, to put the recipe together for me; I didn’t really love the final result, as it needs a ton of tweaking. it told me not to add more salt on top of my grated parmesan, but the crackers were definitely under seasoned. I probably also under baked the crackers because Chris said that after cooling, the texture was more stale than crunchy. When I tried it fresh out of the oven, the texture was nice and crisp. But three hours later, they definitely seemed stale. I’m not sure if Kaia will like these, but I will pack them anyway and see what she thinks.

She saw them on the counter when she came home from school today and got excited. It was as though she was a little puppy with her ears perking up. Her eyes immediately went to it and she asked if she could smell them.

“Is this for me?” she asked me, her eyes sparkling. “Is this a special treat for me?”

Well… I hope she likes them, at least a little. I hope she isn’t too disappointed when she takes her first bite and thinks they are stale. But… she doesn’t even know what “stale” means, right, at least… not yet?

Homemade soybean milk: a bit of labor, a lot of love, and an unexpected crap ton of cleanup

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I wasn’t really that thorough when researching how to make soy milk. I gave ChatGPT and Claude a few general prompts and decided I’d make the soy milk with the Instant Pot method. For traditional Chinese (or Asian) style soy milk, the process goes like this: soak the dried soybeans overnight, strain and rinse the beans the next day; then add the beans to a blender and grind with water until smooth. Then, you add this mixture into a big pot with some additional water, bring to a boil, then simmer for about 15-20 minutes. You strain it again, and voila! You have fresh soy milk. At this stage, you can choose to add some sugar to it if you’d like, but it’s pretty much done.

What is not written in this general instruction set is that during the boiling and simmering process, you have to stir the pot constantly. If you do not do this, the bean solids will stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. This could cause your soy milk to have an off or burnt flavor, which you don’t want. I thought I could avoid the need to stir constantly if I did this process in the Instant Pot. Well, I was wrong: I got the dreaded “burn” error, so I ended up having to boil it in the Instant Pot on the “saute” setting and let it simmer there. Sadly, no AI tool warned me that soy milk foams and boils over even quicker and more vigorously than cow milk. When I thought the soy milk was just heating up in the Instant Pot, it actually started bubbling over and onto my kitchen counter! It got everywhere, even inside the inner pot of my Instant Pot. This worried me because if too much liquid gets into the inner pot, it could actually malfunction. So I spent over an hour cleaning up this whole beany mess all over the inside and outside of my poor Instant Pot after the soy milk was finished cooking. I had to whip out sponges, towels of various sizes, chopsticks, brushes, Q-tips, and even toothpicks to get it all out! That was a lot more manual work than I had originally planned for. The Instant Pot base is now air drying, sitting on its side. This will remain until I am definitely in the clear two days from now.

I am quite proud of my final product, though: I ended up with about 5.5 cups of super fresh, thick, luscious, beany soy milk. I added a pinch of sea salt during the boiling process and a little less than 4 teaspoons of sugar at the end. The flavor was even beanier than I had imagined! The entire kitchen was so fragrant of fresh, hot soybean milk when it was cooking; I really enjoyed that smell and found it so comforting. When I smelled the milk, I knew it was successful. But I had another visible sign of success: when I let the hot soy milk sit after straining, it created this beautiful, thick layer of yuba on the top, the “skin” of the soy milk. This is a positive sign that the heat has caused the proteins and fats in the milk to rise to the surface and bind together into that delicious, cohesive layer of what is essentially paper-thin tofu!

There’s so much magic in just soybeans, water, and a pinch of salt. I have also learned my lessons for next time: use the steamer basket to hold the soybean solids during pressure cooking and keep them from the bottom of the pot. If this works, this will mean there will be no reason to worry about anything boiling over since the “saute” function would not be used.

I am looking forward to making this again and again. The process was so satisfying. I still have over 4.5 lb. of dried soybeans left!

Buy-Nothing strikes again with non-GMO dried soybeans!

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I haven’t been very active on Buy-Nothing this year. Earlier in the year, I gave away a bunch of things on it. A handful of things I posted shockingly had zero interest, so I ended gathering a bunch of things to donate to some charity who was willing to pick up. But in terms of finding things to take, I haven’t seen much that would be relevant for us. Well, that was until two days ago, when a neighbor posted that she mistakenly got sent a 5-lb. bag of dried soybeans, though the label said “soybean seeds.” She said that if there was no interest by the end of the weekend, she would toss them.

I balked at this: she was planning to throw these out?! I could make quite a number of batches of fresh soy milk or tofu out of this! I raised my hand immediately! Only one other person was interested (also Asian), but she wasn’t able to pick up this weekend. So, I was the winner! Within hours, the original poster messaged me to say I could come pick it up on Sunday. So I walked out Sunday morning during this “Nor’easter” aka light drizzle and picked up my free dried soy bean haul. I was so, so excited. I have thought about making my own soy milk because I love it so much, but I wasn’t really sure if it would really be that cost effective if I bought organic / non-GMO dried soybeans. These beans are not organic, but they’re non-GMO, and that’s good enough for me for now. While I have settled on some western store-bought brands like the Trader Joe’s carton version (the ingredients are pure, just soybeans, water, and a little sea salt), I use them only for morning protein smoothies, not for their flavor or pure drinking. If I am drinking a soy milk straight, I want it to be Chinese style: luscious, smooth, creamy, a little thick, and beany. I strongly dislike that the western palate thinks “beany” is bad for soy milk. Soy is a bean, guys!! Plus, it’s a delicious one! Get with the program!

So, on my list of things to do this week is to make real, fresh, soybean milk from scratch in my Instant Pot. The first step is to soak the beans overnight. This will be my first time, and I’m really looking forward to it!

Tofu “noodles”

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As someone who is half (Cantonese) Chinese, I have probably done the most experimentation with my vast country’s food in last ten years than I have at any other point of my life. For those in the know and who are interested, Chinese cuisine’s endless variety and regional cuisines have been spotlighted a lot more, and because of this, demand for those ingredients has increased. So while amazing online sites like Mala Market exist, even our local Hong Kong Supermarket in Manhattan Chinatown stocks a lot of these rarer ingredients now. I feel like a lot of my food experimenting in the kitchen has just begun!

Before we ended our daily double commutes to Chinatown for Kaia’s preschool years (still a little sad and wistful this has come to an end…), I started stocking up on a lot of freezer and pantry items since I knew the daily access would be gone soon. A few of the things I stocked up on for the freezer were pressed tofu and tofu “noodles.” The “noodles” are pressed tofu strips that have been wound up into flat balls, waiting to be unraveled, cut, and blanched. These are not only tasty with a nice springy texture, but they are also extremely high in protein; an 85-gram serving is already 23 grams of complete plant-based protein!

I made them today using a Sichuanese method as a cold salad. The dish is known as “Three-Sliver Vegetable and Tofu Salad With Chili Oil Dressing” (Hóngyóu Sānsī, 红油三丝), which I got from Xueci Cheng, this Sichuanese recipe developer I’ve been following. It’s a really easy dish once you have the chili oil made. You mix a couple additional ingredients into the chili oil (soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, a pinch of salt) and whisk it. Then you add it to a plate of finely julienned and salted carrot and cucumbers (drained of excess liquid from the salting) and the tofu strips. I didn’t have the patience to finely slice the tofu strips into tiny noodles, but maybe i will try again next time. Then you add more chili oil on top, toss, and finish with minced cilantro. It was a nice, crunchy, chewy, spicy salad!

I really enjoyed this tofu salad. I’ve already added these tofu “noodles” to my list of things to buy again when I am in Chinatown next!

The roasted duck is bubbling and scenting up the house

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We are currently about 15 minutes away from a fully finished, whole roast duck. The entire house smells like a combination of five-spice blend and duck fat. I have already drained off over a cup of duck fat from the pan. From my office area, I can hear the duck’s fat bubbling off into the bottom of the roasting pan. I am eager to see how crispy my duck skin has gotten and how much of the fat has been rendered from the skin!

Assuming this is successful, I wonder if we will get lucky at our next Costco run (next month!) and score yet another reasonably priced whole duck to roast! Then I can really put my duck skills into repeat practice!

**Several hours later**

Okay, so I got the leg and thigh right: the skin was flavorful and crispy while the meat was juicy and tender. The breast is really where the challenge is. Even with two heat settings, 325 F for 75 minutes and a 425 F blast for 15 minutes, the breasts still had not rendered out enough fat to get crispy; they actually seemed annoyingly flabby. So I let the whole duck rest for about 30 minutes. Then I carved it… Okay, fine. I didn’t really carve it. I kind of butchered it and messed it up. A lot of the skin tore off. Rib bones got stuck to the breast. I am a pretty sloppy whole chicken carver, but this duck was even more challenging and frustrating! ChatGPT gave this explanation for why this was more frustrating: “Duck is trickier to carve than chicken because the breast sits tightly against a broad rib cage and the skin is thinner and more delicate. The easiest way to stop tearing it is to stop thinking of it as ‘slicing meat off the carcass’ and instead remove each breast as one whole piece first.” I guess I will have to heed that advice next time… If I decide to brave out a whole duck roasting experience again.

I still managed to have two separate and mostly in tact breast pieces with their skin on top. I took both pieces and laid them down in a hot, un-oiled carbon steel pan to render out more fat and crisp up the skin. The result was pretty good. But I have a feeling I would have done a better job if I had just carved up the duck into separate raw pieces to begin with, “confited” the legs, and seared the breasts the way we did in my duck cooking class Chris got me over three years ago. I’ll consider that for next time.

The cleanup was a little miserable to put it lightly. Duck grease got pretty much everywhere and made its way all over the stove, all the counters, on dishes that didn’t even have duck, all over the sink and faucets. Of course, it splattered in the oven, but luckily not as much as I had feared. I was able to clean most of it off easily with a mix of baking soda, soap, water, and elbow grease. I may try this one or two more times just for the experience and challenge, but I can see clearly now why duck is one of those dishes that people leave to the pros. Even if you do get it mostly right, like I did this time, the cleanup is so freaking annoying and time consuming. I am currently soaking my oven mitts now because the duck grease is caked on so badly!

The entire apartment also smells like duck fat; it doesn’t matter what room I am in. This may be okay for now, but tomorrow, I may change my mind.

A cooking challenge: whole duck

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Last autumn while at Costco, I stumbled upon a whole duck in the refrigerator section. I looked at it and realized it was quite a gem to find a WHOLE DUCK as an option, and for a bargain price of about $3.69/lb! So I decided to add it to our cart… and then was so intimidated by the thought of cooking a whole duck that I left it in the back of the freezer this entire time. The idea of cooking a whole duck has terrified me pretty much my entire cooking life.

So I finally gathered all my courage and yanked my 4.5-lb halal duck out of the back of the freezer and have been thawing it in the fridge since Saturday night. I took it out, drained it, then fully dried it. I decided I would cook it the only way I knew how to, which is Chinese-style. I created a Chinese five spice rub with my Burlap and Barrel five-spice blend (the best!), fresh minced garlic, ginger, salt, and pepper. I rubbed it all over inside and out after pricking the skin all over to allow the fat to render out during the roast. I placed it, uncovered, in our fridge to dry out. I plan to roast it tomorrow afternoon.

Am I terrified of how it will turn out? Yes. I am scared I will overcook the breasts and not achieve crispy skin. I have procrastinated on this long enough, though. And age is supposed to make me wiser, right? I kept trying to get reassurance from ChatGPT Pro, who has been telling me that while I may be a novice to cooking duck, I am certainly no novice cook. I know the usual signs of poultry doneness, whether it’s under or overcooked, etc. I just need to breathe. So tomorrow, I will do a two-temperature roasting, the first at 325 F, then the final blast at 425 F to crisp the skin. I need as many good vibes as possible to ensure I don’t smoke up the whole kitchen from all the duck fat that will be rendered; I read that it can be as much as two to three CUPS of rendered duck fat out of a single bird!! But as all my fitness app trainers have always said: if it doesn’t challenge you, then it won’t change you!

Teaching my child about food, how it’s grown, how to prepare it, and how to cook it

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Years ago, a friend of mine who has never been into cooking, does not like to cook, and rarely cooks, said that he found cooking to be a very dissatisfying task.

“You spend all this time and energy on cooking, and then within minutes if not seconds, it’s all gone!” he said to me. “You have nothing to show for!”

I smiled. I told him this was one of many, many reasons I found cooking so inherently satisfying. I did not want it to stay with me as a “thing” forever. I wanted to make it, enjoy the process and flavor (and hopefully the health benefits), and then be done with it and move on to the next food. Back then, I was already extremely anti-clutter, so the idea of having lots of “things” piling up in my house was absolutely not something that would bring me joy. Here’s one hobby I’ve always superficially thought about but know I’d unlikely ever get into because it would inevitably make me accumulate lots of things: pottery and ceramics. This seems fun, challenging, and therapeutic, but I don’t need endless ceramics in my house!

As with growing and harvesting your own food, cooking food makes you more connected with what you’re eating. It forces you to think more critically about what you are putting into your body and why. There’s also some creativity involved with food preparation and cooking that can be fun. As most health guidances will tell you, what you put into your body (EAT!) is a huge contributing factor to your health, more so than exercise, so if you have control over it, why would you not try to optimize for both flavor and health?

Kaia has had an interest in cooking and baking on and off since she was a baby. Many times as a baby, she’d watch me cook from her high chair. Then as she was able to stand on her step stool and be in the kitchen with me as she got bigger, she’d help me with simple tasks like stirring, folding, pouring, and simple cutting (with kid-safe knives). She’s not always interested in helping out, though, as at the end of the day, she is a child. But as of late, she’s been asking more “why” questions about food prep, and I’ve really enjoyed it. At just over 4.5 years old, she’s still very much into her vegetables, particularly her Asian greens.

“Mama, what vegetable is that?” Kaia asked this morning as I washed some red mustard greens I picked up at the Greenmarket on Friday.

“These are called red mustard greens,” I replied. “These are very good and in season!”

Kaia frowned. “I don’t want to eat red mustard greens! I want bok choy! Can you make some bok choy for me?”

“Pookster, Mama doesn’t have bok choy today,” I said to her in my stern voice. “We have red mustard greens that are very fresh, and I’m going to cook them. I can show you how to make them so you can see they are yummy. You want to see?”

“No, no no!” Kaia insisted, running away. “I want bok choy! I don’t want to try red mustard greens! I don’t like them!”

I’ve told her more times than I can count that she cannot not like something she has never had. But as per usual, she ignored me. So instead, I feigned ignorance and continued to heat up my wok.

Kaia eventually walked back over to the kitchen and got on her tippy toes to see what was in my wok. Tentatively with curious big eyes, she asked, “Can I see what you’re cooking?”

“Yes, can you go get your step stool so you can watch?” I suggested to her, as I added some oil to the hot wok.

She obediently grabbed her step stool from the bathroom, dragged it over to the front of the stove, asked me to stabilize the legs, and climbed up to watch every step of the cooking process. In minutes, the cooking was all done: we had stir fried red mustard greens flavored with garlic, a touch of soy sauce, and rice vinegar. Then came her favorite part.

“Can I taste?” Kaia asked me, smiling. “I want the stem first!”

My Kaia Pookie has always loved the stems, ever since she was a baby. So I picked out a stem with my tongs and placed it into her wide open mouth. “Oooooh, this is so delicious!” she said happily. “Can I have a leaf now, please?”

She ate a few bites of red mustard green leaves, and then I told her she had to wait until lunch time to eat more. Kaia was so happy about her red mustard greens after watching me make it.

I want Kaia to have a healthy relationship with food, and to respect how it’s grown, prepared, and cooked. One thing I say a lot to her, which she does and does not like is, “Good food takes time.” So far, I think she’s on a pretty good track.

Today ends our 2-year streak of going to Manhattan Chinatown almost every weekday

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I knew today would be a bittersweet day for all of us given that it’s Kaia’s last day of summer camp at her school for the last two years in Chinatown. Tomorrow, we fly out to San Francisco, so while I wanted to get some takeout for our last evening, I knew I needed it to keep well in the freezer since we’d likely have leftovers. So after my haircut this afternoon, I walked down from the East Village to Chinatown to several locations to mark the end of an era for us:

  1. Super Taste: The divey, hole-in-the-wall Lanzhou restaurant on Eldridge Street that churns out some of my favorite dumplings and noodles in all of New York City. It was shocking to me that this tiny place, where my friend and I used to go in the early 2010s for casual and cheap dinner catch-ups, had completely blown up because of foodie influencers. It used to be very quiet, discreet, with mostly Chinese people speaking Chinese in it. Now every time I pass it, there’s a line of people of all backgrounds waiting! They’ve also expanded their menu quite a bit. Somehow, they still manage to keep their prices relatively low. Tonight, I picked up two orders of dumplings (“open mouth” fried pork and chive dumplings and zhong shui jiao, Sichuanese style fat dumplings) — 20 dumplings total for just $13! Crazy cheap for 2026, and still so, so good!
  2. Kuih Cafe: Honestly, I’ve neglected this place for the last couple of years. I was one of her original customers when she first opened in February 2020, right before the pandemic almost ended the world. This used to be a regualr stop on my Chinatown list when I’d bring back lots of little things from lots of businesses to try. I was scared, given the timing of her tiny storefront opening, that her business wouldn’t make it. Now 6.5 years in, she has a very, very loyal following with people of all backgrounds and tourists from all over the world lining up to get some of her goodies. And she’s only open three day a week — Friday through Sunday! Veronica focuses on desserts mostly (kuih and Southeast Asian style cakes), but she used to do savory dishes that I enjoyed. It had been a long time since I’d come, so she did not recognize me. This visit, I ordered the pandan mochi waffle with a taro kaya filling. I asked for the kaya on the side since I’d be transporting it home and didn’t want to get it soggy. She looked down her nose at me and asked why I wanted it on the side. When I explained this, she looked relieved (probably didn’t want to hear a story about some picky eaters who didn’t want the kaya!), then instructed me to either oven toast or air-fry the waffle promptly when I got home to maximize the texture. This mochi waffle with the taro kaya was so delicious. The textural contrast between the crunchy waffle outside, the chewy mochi inside, and the soft, sticky taro kaya was super addictive. The pandan was really fragrant. Chris only had a bite because he said he was too full from dinner, but he missed out a lot! Kaia wanted the waffle by itself after she had one taste of the taro kaya and said, “That is for adults!” Then she kept nibbling on the waffle, mumbling between bites, “Tasty! So good! So yummy!” I feel like I need to go back here more. I was behind a woman in line who pre-ordered her Mid-Autumn Moon Festival mooncakes. Maybe this is the year I actually splurge and buy them? Chris isn’t a mooncake fan, but I’m sure I could get Kaia to eat them. The only one she’d previously enjoyed was a red bean one that came straight from Malaysia courtesy of the Sambal Lady!
  3. Hay Hay Roasted: Chris asked for roasted meats, so he got roasted meat. I stopped by this little restaurant on Mott to pick up their honey-roasted cha siu. It’s a little more expensive than Green Garden Village depending on the day (Green Garden’s pricing is always fluctuating), but their lean cuts are very, very lean. And the honey flavor is subtle but done really well. I also appreciate that service is very fast, efficient, and friendly.

And then after a stop at Hong Kong Supermarket to stock up on oyster sauce (the current bottle in my fridge is only a quarter full — gasp!), I picked up Pookster, stopped by a street kiosk to let her buy a surprise end-of-summer gift she’d been asking me about since June — a K-Pop Demon Hunters themed pushy game (no idea what these things are called…), and then off we went home!

I still have too many bookmarks for the Chinatown/Lower East Side area that I haven’t gotten to. Now when I go down there, inevitably every time I come home, my shoulders will be heavy carrying a lot of goodies back, just like the way it was pre Kaia being in preschool.

Chinese yam, pork, and carrot soup – a Cantonese soup standby

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It’s a bittersweet week this week for us, as it’s Kaia’s last week at summer camp at the same school in Chinatown for the last two years. She spent 3K and 4K/Pre-K at this Chinese immersion, dual language school, as part of New York City’s UPK program. It’s been a gift (and quite the savings…!) to not have to pay for school for the last two years, other than after-care fees and summer camp. What this also means is that this is our last week having daily trips to Chinatown… a very sad reality I have to spend time mourning. So I started going through my list of things to stock up on and also remembered a couple of things I wanted to make with fresh ingredients while I still have easy access to them.

This year, I was able to achieve my goal of making soups more frequently. According to TCM, soup is a nourishing component of a meal. In Chinese culture, it’s often noted that a complete meal should be “san cai yi tang” (三菜一汤), or three meat/protein/vegetable dishes and one soup, served alongside rice. I had a lot of bone broth in the fridge I made from chicken wings and chicken feet I got from Chinatown. And I ended up using it today with Chinese yam (or huai shan), pork shoulder (also from Chinatown!), carrots, red dates, ginger, goji berries, and shiitake mushrooms. Chinese yam is a pretty traditional Chinese vegetable. It’s used both fresh and dried; today, I bought it fresh for this soup. It’s considered a nourishing root vegetable that supports digestion, stabilizes blood sugar, and boosts overall vitality. I remember my grandma using it in soups growing up. The texture once cooked is almost like taro. When Chinese yam is raw and fresh, the stalks are long, hard, and thin. It has a really tough brown skin with lots of “hair” on it — definitely not the first vegetable you’d pick up when adventuring to explore new produce, as it’s on the “ugly” or even borderline “scary” looking side. And once you peel the skin off, the white flesh is hard to grasp firmly, as it becomes very sticky and gummy. On the plus side, the fresh root has active digestive enzymes; supposedly when you have mucus, it can help clear it for you!

So I made this soup today. I even served it for Chris and me with a tiny little shallow dish of high quality aged soy sauce for dipping the shredded pork pieces into — super traditional and like we had it growing up. And inhaling the familiar aromas and eating it really did remind me of home — at least, the happier parts. It’s funny that it’s taken me to age 40 to really understand and appreciate how much love and care my grandma put into all the soups she made for us almost every single day. I actually cannot remember a day living with her when there was not a huge pot of traditional Chinese soup on the stove!

And while I dipped some pieces of pork shoulder into the soy sauce, I could also faintly remember watching Ed try to fish out the biggest, most tender pieces of pork out of the stock pot so that he could eagerly dip and eat them himself. I always just ate and drank what was served to me and didn’t care about which pieces I got. Most of my happiest childhood memories are tied to food.

Making homemade chili oil after a long hiatus

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In the last year, I haven’t really made chili oil at all. This used to be something I’d do every few months to have something on standby that was spicy and delicious to drizzle on dumplings or plainer foods. But I suppose we had been spoiled quite a bit by being gifted chili oils and crisps from friends, as well as supporting small, local businesses here in New York City and in San Francisco by buying their chili oils. Last year, I found a delicious and well rounded Chinese-style chili oil I tasted and enjoyed from a farmers market in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Then last August, we visited the San Francisco Ferry Building farmers market, where we got to sample a salsa macha that was so tasty that it compelled me to buy it and check a bag (over 100ml!) to go back to New York. Before I visited this farmers market stand, I had never heard of salsa macha before. It’s a rich, smoky, crunchy Mexican-style chili oil that originates from Veracruz. It usually uses various Mexican chilies like chile de arbol or morita, as well as various nuts and seeds. Given it has nuts and seeds as well as chilies, it definitely tends to to taste nuttier than the average Chinese chili oil.

I forgot how simple and quick the entire process is: add all the various ground chilies to a heat proof bowl, along with salt. The ground chilies I usually use are gochugaru (Korean chili flakes for flavor and the bright red hue), regular red pepper flakes for heat, and ground Sichuanese peppercorns. This time for variety, I also added a bit of silk chili flakes (the more sustainable version of Aleppo pepper). Heat up a cup / 240ml of neutral oil in a sauce pan along with some aromatics (I vary it up, but this time, I used a few slices of ginger, star anise, fennel seeds, and cloves). Wait until the oil reaches 325-340 F, then pour the oil through a strainer directly over the ground chilies. And voila! You now have freshly made chili oil in less than ten minutes. I usually wait about 30 minutes to an hour to let the oil fully cool, then I mix it and add it to a glass jar. The glass jar can be stored in the fridge indefinitely, but probably has the best flavor if consumed within a month or two.

I am still sniffing the bowl because it smells so good. I definitely need to do this more often. A year is too long to wait for homemade chili oil!