Szechuan Sauce

Rick and Morty has really become a cult hit these past few years and recently we've seen a riot like reaction to the limited time Szechuan sauce that McDonalds introduced. There was a storm of people demanding that McDonalds re-release the Szechuan sauce (I'm going to start calling it Sichuan because that's how it's spelt in China). Videos of these people storming McDonalds and demanding the sauce has taken youtube by storm.

So what is McDonalds Sichuan sauce? To be honest, I'm not really sure as I haven't actually tried the McDonald's sauce myself but I'v heard it's close to a slightly spicy teriyaki sauce. It's a dipping sauce for..... chicken nuggets!

What is it's connection with Sichuan?

Sichuan is famous through China and quickly becoming known throughout the world for it's spicy & numbing foods. The locals here grow up on hot pot, a giant boiling fondue pot of red chili peppers, numbing peppers and red oil that create a strong and very spicy flavor experience. Outside of hot pot, practically every street food and restaurant load their dishes up with the famous chinese red pepper known commonly around here as xiaomila 小米辣. Mix sichuan's popular spicy flavor with an already popular teriyaki sauce and it's the recipe for a brilliant new dipping sauce.

Sichuan's real sauce

The popular Mcdonald's Sichuan sauce doesn't actually exist in China, or at least not in Chengdu, Sichuan. I'v been to several Mcdonalds around these parts asking about the sauce with no luck, they've never even heard of it. There are several sauces though that every person in Sichuan and even China know about though and they're what i'm going to introduce below.

For today's blog, I'v readied a batch of my very own chicken nuggets as well as 4 popular sauces that you can find in almost any Sichuan family home. From the left to right we have:

1. Sichuan bamboo shoot & beef sauce
2. Sichuan mushroom and beef sauce
3. Old Mother's meat sauce
4. Sichuan spicy fragrant beef sauce

Sichuan bamboo shoot/mushroom beef sauce

I'm putting these 2 sauces together because they're the same brand and their taste is very similar. These 2 sauces are made from fermented soy beans, beef and a type of vegetable. The sauce is oily and has a red/brown color. It's a thicker sauce with big chunks of very tender beef, bamboo shoots and mushrooms. Being a thicker chunky sauce, it's not actually good for dipping, if you wanted to eat it with something like chips it would probably snap the chip.

The sauce itself has a very slight sour undertone from the fermentation and it's very salty. I can't recommend eating this as a straight salt without a liter of water next to you. In Sichuan it's usually mixed into a bowl of noodles or mixed into your fried rice. It's just a bit to salty to eat by itself so it's best when mixed in with something else. I personally like to put it as a condiment in my burgers!

Old Mother's meat sauce

This is by far the most popular sauce in not only Sichuan but probably all of China. It comes in a large variety of flavors and practically every Chinese family has a jar or two in their kitchen. The flavor I have today is a meat strip red chili oil sauce. It's also a thicker sauce but it's accompanied by a LOT of oil. The sauce itself is made from red chili peppers, pork, salt and numbing pepper. It's extremely flavorful and has a very strong meaty taste and an even stronger numbing taste. Unlike the previous sauce, it's not salty and is ate in a huge variety of ways from a dumpling dipping sauce to a rice mix in. I also found it perfectly suitable for chicken nuggets although a bit greasy!

According to it's back label it actually isn't from Sichuan, but instead Guizhou. I'v included it in this list though because it's a staple sauce in every Sichuan home and carries the famous red chili and numbing pepper flavor that has made Sichuan so famous in the food world.

Funny bit of information... this sauce is quite the meme in the foreign community in China. It's often machine translated by the companies and restaurants that use it here as "Old f*** mother". 老 lao means old. 干gan means do or the f word. And 妈 ma means mom.

Sichuan spicy fragrant beef sauce

Unlike the last 3 sauces, this is the least oil but I'd still consider it pretty oily by sauce standards. It's a more uniformed sauce unlike the other 3 that have big chunks of chili peppers, meats, and vegetables. Like the first sauces though, it's also made from fermented beans and red chili peppers. It's the spiciest of the sauces and also a little sour from the bean fermentation. This sauce is also very fragrant or flavorful. The flavor in chinese is 香辣 xiangla where 香 means fragrant (not like perfume but more so like flavorful) and 辣 la means spicy.