Hello there! Mia here, the newsletter editor for New York Times Cooking, filling in for Tanya this week. You saw her excellent guide to the best takeaway at small New York City grocery stores, right? If not, take some time with that and I’ll meet you back here.
A long time ago (2018), I wrote about Lao Gan Ma’s spicy chile crisp for New York Magazine’s The Strategist. I gave my loving ode the headline “I Panic if I Don’t Have at Least Five Jars of This Spicy Chile Crisp,” and the sentiment still stands. I have not found a better (saltier, crunchier, funkier, tongue-tinglier) way to perk up pretty much everything I eat. Steamed vegetables. Scrambled eggs. Vanilla ice cream. I have been known to smear a spoonful of chile crisp on a bowl of hot rice and call that dinner, and I make no apologies for it.
But adding spicy chile crisp as a topping is only the tip of the chile-crisp iceberg. When it’s used as an ingredient — essentially, standing in for cooking oil — chile crisp adds warmth and dimension, its spiciness mellowing as it relaxes into the dish.
This carrot risotto from Alexa Weibel is an excellent example: The chile crisp melts into and balances the base of shallots, garlic and white wine, and it gives the sweet carrots a subtly spicy contrast. Also — that color! If there was ever a time for a vibrantly orange risotto, I’d argue October is it.
Carrot Risotto With Chile Crisp
Before I continue: Here’s a recipe for homemade chile crisp. You can make Genevieve Ko’s recipe as spicy or mild as you’d like by adjusting the variety and amount of dried chile you use. When I make my chile crisp, I usually use coarse gochugaru, which isn’t too hot and lends a nice floral note.
Ali Slagle also gets creative with her chile crisp. She sizzles drained, canned chickpeas in it for her chile-crisp chickpea rice bowl; mixes it with garlic, lemon and soy sauce to dress her chile-crisp tofu, tomatoes and cucumbers; and gives it extra body with peanut butter for this one-pot tofu and broccoli rice. In true Ali fashion, all of these recipes are generously flexible with their vegetables, so feel free to use whatever arrived in this week’s C.S.A. box.
Two more dishes where chile crisp does the heavy lifting: Hetty Lui McKinnon’s chile-crisp fried rice with tofu and edamame, has the crisp, with all its oily aromatic bits, standing in for the oil, garlic and ginger that might begin a fried rice recipe. And these chile-oil noodles with cilantro from Judy Kim offer chile crisp as a swap for chile oil, which, definitely. That way you get the dreamy combination of chewy noodles and crunchy crisp.
Lastly, I can’t talk chile crisp without mentioning one of my all-time favorite NYT Cooking recipes, Genevieve’s chile-crisp fettuccine Alfredo with spinach. (I make this so often that it’s become a bit of a joke in my household; if there’s heavy cream in the fridge, my husband knows we’re having this dish for dinner.) In her new cookbook, “Easy Weeknight Dinners,” Emily Weinstein lists this fast, no-chop pasta as the only recipe in the “Honestly, Just Go Make This Right Now” section. My thoughts exactly.
Chile-Crisp Tofu, Tomatoes and Cucumbers
Chile Crisp Fried Rice With Tofu and Edamame
Chile Crisp Fettuccine Alfredo With Spinach
Chile Crisp
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