7 Hunan spicy dishes you'll meet on a Zhangjiajie table
From the bold, fragrant signature down to the pounded chilli and pickles no meal goes without.
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This is the signature dish of Hunan cuisine, the one everyone orders. A big-headed fish is split in half and topped with duojiao (剁椒) — fresh red chilli chopped fine and salt-cured — and some places use both red and yellow pickled chilli for two colours. It's scattered with garlic, ginger and scallion, then steamed until the flesh is just-set and springy. The sweet, fresh fish drinks up the salty, fragrant chilli; it's bold and aromatic but never numbing. The move is to order rice noodles to toss through the chilli juices at the bottom once the fish is gone. It's properly spicy — if you'd rather tone it down, ask for less chilli (少辣).
The simplest dish here and one of the most addictive — fresh green chillies are fire-roasted until the skins blister and char a little, then pounded in a mortar with garlic, salt and oil. Some kitchens add a roasted aubergine, or century egg (擂辣椒皮蛋). It's a standing table condiment for Hunan people, good enough to mix through a whole bowl of plain rice. The flavour is hot and fragrant from the roasted chilli, sharp with garlic, fresher and rawer than fried chilli. It's the clearest proof of how much Hunan loves chilli — even the condiment is pure chilli. Try a little over rice first; it's hotter than it looks.
The gan bian (干煸, dry-frying) technique means searing over high heat with little oil until the skins of the beans wrinkle and smell toasted, then stir-frying with minced pork, dried chilli, garlic and slivers of pickled chilli. You get green beans that are crisp outside and tender within, fragrant, nicely spicy and a touch salty from black beans. It's a vegetable plate you keep going back to with rice — and one of the least spicy of the true Hunan dishes, which makes it a good starting point if you're not used to the heat. Order it alongside a fiery plate like the fish head and alternate between them.
If you had to pick one dish to explain Hunan farmhouse cooking, it's this — thin-sliced pork belly stir-fried over high heat with green "vegetable" chillies (mild, sweet long peppers with a little kick), pickled chilli, garlic and black beans. It's seasoned salty and savoury, the pork has just enough fat, and the peppers come out crisp, sweet and lightly hot. Hunan people eat this with rice at just about every meal. The heat is mostly from the peppers and pickled chilli — not as extreme as the fish head, but still hotter than outsiders expect. It's easy to order, reliably delicious, and the best plate for getting through a bowl of rice.
Free-range chicken chopped into bite-size pieces and stir-fried over high heat with a generous pile of dried chilli, garlic, ginger and pickled chilli until the edges of the meat catch and crisp. It comes out hot, fragrant and coated in chilli oil. The Hunan version leans on fresh and pickled chilli more than the Sichuan one, which adds numbing peppercorn, so this is a straight heat without the tingle. The free-range chicken is chewy and full of flavour. It's a much-loved plate to share or eat with rice — some kitchens make it hot enough that you'll fish a few chillies out, so if you don't want it scorching, ask for less chilli (少辣) or ask how hot it is before you order.
Hunan is a land of pickling — pickled mustard greens, pickled long beans, and above all pickled chilli (酸辣椒/剁辣椒), fresh chilli salt-fermented until sour, used both in cooking and as a relish. These sour pickles are the reason Hunan food has a "sour" dimension (suanla) and isn't only about heat. Stir-fried with minced pork or other meat, they make a sharp, appetite-opening sour-spicy plate; left beside a dish, they're there to cut richness. Hunan people can no more do without pickled chilli than a Thai cook can do without fish sauce and chilli. Spoon some pickle over rice between fiery plates and you'll find you can keep eating longer.
Beyond the steamed fish head, Hunan cooks also take small freshwater fish, fry them until the skin crisps, then stir-fry with fresh chilli, pickled chilli, garlic and scallion. The fish comes out fragrant and firm-fleshed, with a sharp, aromatic heat; some kitchens do a sour-spicy (酸辣) version with pickled vegetables stirred in. It's slightly less fiery than the steamed fish head and very good with rice. But if you want fish with no chilli at all, order steamed-with-soy fish (清蒸鱼) instead — you'll get the sweet, fresh fish flavour on its own, which is a good palate-rest when you've ordered several spicy plates.
If you're a group and some of you can't take the heat, don't worry — Hunan restaurants always have non-spicy dishes to order alongside. The ones to know are steamed-with-soy fish (清蒸鱼), blanched or simply-fried greens (清炒时蔬), tomato-and-egg (番茄炒蛋), clear soup (例汤) and braised tofu. These are mellow, chilli-free, and let anyone who doesn't eat spice eat happily while resting everyone's palate. The trick is to order spicy and non-spicy plates roughly half and half, add plenty of plain rice, and the whole table eats well no matter how much heat each person can take.