Welcome! We're veteran authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough with over three dozen cookbooks to our names (plus knitting books and a memoir from Mark). Our latest is THE LOOK & COOK AIR FRYER BIBLE, packed with photos, one for every step. You can find it here.

In this episode of our food and cooking podcast, we're back in the kitchen, making a batch of homemade chili crisp. If you don't know, chili crisp is a Chinese condiment that has overtaken the world! It's hot, garlicky, and aromatic. And surprisingly easy to make. Look for the recipe below!

We've also got a one-minute cooking tip for your holidays. And we'll let you know what's making us happy in food this week.

[01:04] Our one-minute cooking tip: how to make perfect whipped cream from scratch.

[02:38] We're in the kitchen, making chili crisp. We hope you have as much fun as we do.

Grind all of this in a spice grinder:

2 tablespoons dehydrated onion

2 tablespoons mild smoked paprika

1 tablespoon granulated white sugar

2 teaspoons ground sumac

1 teaspoon table salt

Put the ground spices in a large, heat-safe baking dish, preferably a Pyrex dish. Then stir in:

50g or about 25 dried red chilis (preferably er jing tiao chilis), stemmed and snipped into pieces

1 star anise pod

Heat 2/3 cup or 160 ml neutral-flavored oil to 300F in a medium skillet. Pour over the chilis and aromatics.

When the sizzling stops, stir in 2 TBS jarred fried garlic (an important condiment, available at Asian supermarkets). Cool to room temperature before sealing in a glass jar and storing in the fridge for up to 1 month.

[17:31] What’s making us happy in food this week? Air-fried broccoli cheese casserole and Belgian-style hard cider!

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarbrough.

And together with Bruce, we have written three dozen cookbooks.

And in this episode of our podcast, we're going to put our cooking

chops to the test because we are making a homemade chili crisp.

If you don't know what chili crisp is, well...

I feel sorry for you, but also we're going to tell you what chili crisp is.

Oh my gosh.

Chili crisp, my favorite things in life.

So we're going to make a batch here on the air and let you know how it goes.

If you want to see this recipe, it lives on our website, bruceandmark.

com.

It also will be in our newsletter, which you can sign up for on

our website, bruceandmark.

com.

And of course, we'll post this recipe in our Facebook.

Group cooking with Bruce and Mark.

It's all Bruce and Mark.

Bruce and Mark.

Bruce and Mark.

Everything's Bruce and Mark . So we will post the recipe there on Facebook and

the group cooking with Bruce and Mark.

But besides Chili Crisp, we've got a one minute cooking tip coming

right up and we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

This week's one minute cooking tip for the richest and easiest whipped cream.

It's getting you ready for the holidays.

And I don't want you jumping on me, Mark, because I know this isn't

how you like to do whipped cream.

I know.

I'm gonna let it happen.

For the richest and easiest whipped cream.

Use a hand blender, or you know, those immersion blenders, stick

blenders, that's what they're called.

So you're going to take one cup, or two cups of cream, if you want to make a lot.

Now remember, when you whip cream, it doubles, right, in volume.

So, be prepared.

So you're going to then pour that into, I like to use a Pyrex little...

measuring pitcher, and I use one twice as big as the cream.

So if I have one cup of cream, I use the two cup Pyrex pitcher, two cups of cream,

I use the one quart pitcher, put the stick blender in the bottom, press the button

on it, and it starts to whirl around.

And then you end up with a very dense, not an airy, but a dense, rich whipped

cream without all the splatter that you get when you use a hand mixer.

And if you want to get it even denser, make sure that the whipping

cream is cold, really, really cold, like right out of the refrigerator.

And if you want to get it even denser, put that measuring vessel that you use to

whip it in, put that in the refrigerator overnight for when you make the cream.

The colder everything is, and you can even put the blade of the

stick blender in the refrigerator.

The colder everything is, the denser the whipped cream will ultimately be.

So, there's your one minute cooking tip.

That will get you ready for the holidays.

And now, we're gonna get you ready for something else.

We are gonna make chili crisp on the air.

So, get ready.

Mark and I have talked about Chili Crisp a lot on this podcast, right?

It's been our what's making us happy food this week.

It's been lots of things on the thing is it's expensive.

It can be now.

The basic plain Lao Gan Ma chili crisp.

I love this.

The basic plain.

It was the revelation chili crisp for everyone.

Lao Gan Ma.

It was.

And that woman is now like a billionaire and drives around China in her limousine.

And you could still buy bottles of her chili crisp for about four bucks a

bottle, you know, in most Asian markets.

Yeah, in Whole Foods, you probably spend seven on it, but okay.

But you want to go by Momofuku chili crisp or, you know, Fly by Jing, you're going to

pay 11, 12, 14 for these tiny little jugs.

Oh my goodness, $16.

S Z E, daddy, she daddy.

It's one of my favorites.

She daddy has a funkiness about it that I absolutely love.

So before we get into going on and on about what we're about to

do here, let's just talk about If you don't know what a chili crisp

is, a chili crisp is a condiment.

It is favored in certain regional Chinese cuisines, and it is

essentially a mixture of spices and as the name suggests, tons of dried.

Chili's and oil, of course, and oil and then tons of different mix ins and

what happens is through the oil and the chilies and the spices, you create a

condiment that you can spoon on dumplings.

You can add to noodles.

I stir it into everything.

Bruce puts it on top of hamburgers.

Gosh, you really can do everything with this chili crisp.

Well, okay, you can't paint your house with it.

Well, I bet you could be back all your bedroom with it.

But, um, you can do so much in the kitchen with this chili crisp.

It would be a delicious accompaniment to a roast at Christmas.

You can mix it with mayonnaise for a spread for sandwiches.

You can mix it into butter for a spread to dip into.

It is So versatile and let's get going.

So the technique for chili crisp is pretty much the same across the board.

And that is where you take your dried ground up chilies, all your other spices,

whatever optional add ins you're going to use from sesame seeds to shredded

coconut, and then you're going to heat up oil and pour it over the top.

So the whole thing sizzles together, but I want to talk about the different

kinds of chilies you can use because.

The different chilies will give you a completely different personality

to your chili crisp, right?

Chili de arbol is very commonly used.

They are those small little red chilies.

They are very, very hot.

And so I don't like to use them exclusively.

You may know them from sometimes used in North American Chinese dishes.

If you see that long, red, thin chili in a hot.

dish that's sitting there and people say, Oh, don't eat the chilies.

Well, I have a friend in Texas who eats them all.

Um, anyway, uh, that's, that's that chili day are bold.

You can use standard American chili flakes that you get in the

spice rack at your supermarket.

Yeah.

You can use, but it seems like a standard, you, you can, for this recipe, use chili

flakes, but it seems like they would.

be weird.

And my problem with chili flakes that are sold in the spice rack

of North American supermarkets is that they're very monochromatic.

They don't have any depth of chili that good chili flavor has citrus notes,

high notes, lemony notes, acid notes.

It has all kinds of wild flavors to it.

And it's not just burning hot.

I have bought pre ground Chinese, uh, chili in Asian markets.

And I find that those are so hot also, they give me more flavor

than the chili day or bowl, but I like to ideally grind my own.

And my favorite chilies are Erjingtao.

Okay.

Now you're going to have to explain what an

Erjingtao chili is.

An Erjingtao chili is the, the chili of Sichuan, China.

It is a very long.

Dark red chili, very narrow, skinny, long chili.

It is incredibly flavorful, full of a fruitiness and a little sweetness.

It's got definite, definite fruit flavors.

With a mild heat.

Mild heat from my palate and they, I think a lot of books that I

read about Sichuan food actually call it a Mild chili sweet chili.

Yeah, but most American palates.

It's gonna be a hot chili.

It's hot now It's not burning hot and when I eat it, I don't just faint

Bruce also uses pickled urging towels for some Chinese braises And they're

not they don't knock you out and you can easily eat them and not be bowled

over in your chair If you like spicy food, there, I have many friends who

I would never serve Erjingtao chilies to because it would knock them out.

Well, I have 50 grams here and it's about in the size I

have, there's about 12 of them.

And I'm just using a scissor to cut off the stem end.

And I am not splitting them down the middle and pulling the seeds

out because I want the seeds.

You can do that.

You can split them.

Some like it hot.

I like it hot.

And I'm going to cut these into, you know, like one inch pieces and I'm

putting them into my little spice grinder.

And I'm going to grind them up.

Now here's the trick.

If there are any other spices you want to add, now's the time to put them into

your spice grinder with the chilies.

You need a big spice grinder, but you can put.

You can now put in a little bit of dried cinnamon bark, you know, that those

those barky rolls of cinnamon, you can break up a little piece of that you can

put in a star anise seed, you can put in some cloves, you can put in cardamom,

there's all kinds of different dried.

Uh, or uh, spices that you can put in.

You can put in mustard seeds, you can put in coriander seeds.

So think hard dried spices.

Black peppercorns you can put in here, white peppercorns, which is

very actually traditional in Chinese cooking, you can put in here.

I'm going to put one star anise with these cut up chilies and

now I'm going to grind them.

I'm going to pulse it to make sure they get all ground up.

Now I'm not looking for a powder.

I'm going to stop it and take a look.

I want these to look about the size of standard American red chili flakes.

So that's what I'm going for and this is pretty close.

This is really nice.

So now I am going to dump these into this.

I have this two cup Pyrex.

Picture the same thing I would have done the whipped cream in that we talked about

the first segment And I'm gonna dump these chilies and the ground up star anise into

that.

Okay now to that we're gonna add two Tablespoons of smoked paprika and you can

add mild smoked paprika or if you're brave you can add hot smoked paprika, but then

understand it's going to get really hot.

I like to use the mild here and we always do because it's sweeter and

it kind of balances the chilies.

So two tablespoons of smoked paprika and then, oh, two, maybe

three teaspoons of ground sumac.

And now you're going to have to explain that.

Sumac is a spice, very popular in Middle Eastern cooking, and it adds a tartness.

It's red.

It's like a Burgundy, a dark burgundy red.

It is not the same kind of sumac you have growing along the roadside in New England.

It is a necessarily, this is a Q and so don't eat that because you don't know.

Right, right.

You want to buy culinary sumac.

And I like it because

I also don't know about the stuff growing along the side, the varietal it is.

And you also don't know about the pollutants from cars and et cetera.

Settling on that sumac,

but it adds a sourness, not unlike what.

A char does in Indian food.

And the, the dried, uh, sour, the,

that's a char.

That's not, that's not a char as in cooking, , like you've charred the

steak and now it has a char on it.

That's, it's achar.

Just to be clear, a char in Indian cooking,

which is that, you know, it's the ground sour mango, and that adds a, so

this is really delicious for tartness.

And I am gonna put in two tablespoons of dehydrated onion,

which will add some more crunch.

And I like the onion flavor.

Always want to add granulated or castor sugar to chili crisp.

So we're going to put about a tablespoon of granulated

sugar or castor sugar into it.

Why?

Because the sugar will actually balance all of those chilies.

And actually now here's a kicker for you.

The sugar is a good heat delivery system.

So it's actually going to make the.

Hot bits a little more present even as it balances them So there you go,

and then you need about a teaspoon of we're using just table salt, right?

You could use kosher salt, but why

no table salt actually will dissolve into the oil now notice What was

missing from here mark and I decided?

Not to put any Szechuan peppercorns in this.

We're getting enough heat from the Erjing Tao.

Although you could.

You could if you wanted in that grinder.

You could have thrown a teaspoon of Szechuan peppercorns.

That would be perfectly fine.

Right.

And so now we need to pour.

oil over this, and it needs to be hot.

The oil needs to be about 300 degrees, and we're having two thirds

of a cup of just vegetable oil.

So what you want here is a neutral flavored oil, so just

any neutral flavored oil will do.

Corn oil, refined.

Peanut oil, not unrefined, but refined peanut oil, safflower oil,

canola oil, um, vegetable oil, all those, any kind of neutral flavored

oil is what you're looking for here.

Because all of those aromatics are carrying all the flavor.

Yep.

I've poured it into a little skillet.

I mean, this is a really tiny little six inch skillet.

Now, the oil is not deep enough for me to stick.

a candy or oil thermometer into no when it gets to 300 degrees.

So I'm waiting for it to get a little shimmery.

I don't want smoke coming off of it.

Then it's going to be too hot and my chilies are going to get a

toasted taste that I don't want.

So either you need a laser thermometer, which will tell you the temperature of

it, Or what you could do is what I learned when I took Chinese cooking classes.

You take a chopstick and you take the wider end of it, the flat wider end

of it, and you stick it straight up and down into that oil in the pan.

And if bubbles start to come up around the bottom of that

chopstick, the oil is hot enough.

Okay, it looks like Looks like the bubbles are coming up around the chopstick.

So now what Bruce is going to do is he's going to take this

pan of oil and just pour it over everything in that measuring vessel.

And that's why we use the heat safe vessel because this oil is super hot.

Pour it gently but quickly over the spices.

They'll stick.

Sizzle like mad.

It's really hot.

You want to put your vent on if you have it?

Because you will get

fume.

You want a ventilated space to do this?

This is going to be so good on scrambled eggs because it's burning me right now.

We're not done yet because now, and this is interesting, this

is an ingredient that I can only ever find in Asian supermarkets.

It's jarred pre fried garlic.

It's crunchy little bits of garlic.

If you can't find this, then you need to chop up a couple of tablespoons of

garlic and Fry it in the oil before you make this till it's crispy and brown.

Couldn't

I just put this in the two thirds a cup of oil and let it just right at

the end and let the garlic kind of sizzle in there for a few seconds?

Not a few seconds.

It takes about a couple of minutes for this garlic to get this brown and crunchy.

Wow.

And you run the risk of then overheating your oil or burning the garlic.

So I like, if you want to do that.

Cook the garlic first.

It'll take a few minutes to get crunchy brown.

Take it out.

Then check your oil temperature, pour it over your chilies,

and stir the garlic back in.

After we're stirring this up, this now has to...

Cool, right?

This has to go.

So we're gonna let this cool at least an hour, and then we're

gonna come back and taste it.

So just to say, uh, Bruce's got it here in front of him.

You'll hear it in the jar.

And what happened here is that that chili crisp went into a canning jar.

What size?

This is a pint jar.

Okay, a pint jar.

And then we put a lid on it and put it away for an hour or two.

It's pretty wild.

I know.

You know, this is not as hot as I thought it was.

It's hot.

My throat is burning, but it's so flavorful.

It's so delicious.

There's so much going on in here.

Yeah, that's, that's, that taste from when you killed me

in the kitchen with the fumes.

Mm, that's good.

No, but it's really good.

I'm being, I'm being, uh, not very serious, but it is so complex.

This is so much better than, yeah, no, Shade on Lao Gan Ma,

but it's so much better than her stuff because It's fresher.

This is also much garlicky er, much, much garlicky er.

I want to put this on fried eggs.

And actually, now that I've swallowed it and I'm talking for a minute,

of course it's always to kiss me, Um, everything's cooled down.

I mean, I don't even feel it anymore in my mouth.

It's gone.

That's the fun part of eating hot food and chili for me, is that you eat it,

and it burns what's in your mouth, and then you swallow it, and then the

burn goes away, and then you just want to have more, and you want to keep

going back for more, and every time the cool goes away, you go for more.

So, I have added chili crisps.

to chicken salad.

I have put it on fried eggs.

I put it on scrambled eggs.

I've mixed it with ketchup and put it on fried potatoes.

I've mixed it with sour cream on baked potatoes.

We've actually just had it on its own over dumplings, of course,

even and I now you're going to die from cookbook writers, even frozen

dumplings out of the supermarket.

Why not?

Why not that we have steamed quickly at home for a fast dinner and we

put Chili crisp on top of it using Chili Crisp like this is fantastic.

Now, where you can find this recipe again is of course here on the

podcast, but you can also find it on our website Cooking with Bruce

and mark.com or bruce and mark.com.

It all goes to the same place.

You can look it up there, the recipe lives there.

You can also find it in our Facebook group cooking with Bruce and Mark,

and if you've signed up for our newsletter, you'll get it there.

So there's a lot of ways to get.

This recipe, and honestly, I have to tell you that if you put this in

little tiny canning jars and seal them up and store them in the fridge,

it makes a great New Year's gift for New Year's parties to bring to people

and also little wonderful treats to give people who come to

your house on their way out.

Let them leave with little tiny jars of chili crisp so they can remember you.

Okay.

Well, boy, will they?

Okay.

So that's it for our making a recipe on air.

Now let's turn to what we always do.

What's making us happy in food this week.

So what's making me happy in food this week is something that we made.

on the air for Portland TV.

If you don't know, we are on the air about once a month for Portland,

Oregon AM TV, and we shoot it from our house in New England.

It's really funny.

So it's morning TV there, but it's about noon our time and we shoot

it on our iPhones and we're on with Helen, the host, and we are always

making some recipe and recently on the air and you can probably go to.

a.

m.

Northwest and check out the video and the recipe for this.

We made a broccoli cheese casserole in the air fryer from our book,

the look and cook air fryer Bible.

And I want to tell you when that segment ended, I ate half that nine inch

square of broccoli cheese casserole.

It was so delicious.

It's such an easy recipe from our book.

You may have.

bechamel in the microwave with flour and milk and salt and pepper, you pour it over

thawed frozen broccoli florets that have had some melted butter poured over them,

then you put cheese in that bechamel, and then you cover the top of it with cheese.

And then you just bake it in the air fryer for what, eight

minutes at 375 or something?

That's all it takes.

Oh my gosh.

It's so crunchy and delicious.

I literally had to save myself by throwing half a pan out after taping

that episode for Portland Morning TV.

Okay.

There's my confession and my nightmare, but it was really tasty.

What's making me happy in food this week is a Belgian style hard cider,

which I got from Nine Pin Cidery.

in, uh, Albany, New York.

You seem to be talking about Albany all the time.

We are.

We went into 9 PIM when we were there, and I was asking the woman to describe all

the ciders to me, and all she basically said is that they were all the same.

She was so helpful.

She was so unhelpful.

She said, oh, they're all the same.

It was ridiculous.

We actually said, can you help us choose a cider?

And she literally said, said, I'm not making this up.

They're all the same.

And I'm like, no, they're not.

And do better.

I said to Bruce, as we walked out, I said, the least she could

have done is just made it up.

She could have at least said, well, this one's tart and this one's sweet.

Right.

Cause you know, I would have bought this

like, you know, freshly opened tennis balls

and dryer lint.

This was, this has a dryer lint quality about it.

I know it's like just.

Listen, make it up.

You're paid to be here.

So just do something.

But I bought it for you.

Anyway, she didn't.

So,

but there was one that was made with Belgian yeast.

And I said to her, what does that taste like?

She said, Belgian yeast.

I'm like, oh, that's so helpful.

Thanks for being so helpful.

But what it does taste like,

is it tastes earthy.

And it tastes, it does, it tastes very earthy and almost a little

dirty, but it's also sweeter than I usually like cider to be.

It has a quality, almost like those Belgian beers, which could be on the

sweet side and mixed with the apples.

It was actually really good.

So I'm really enjoying the Belgian farmhouse style cider from 9th and Cidery.

Yeah,

it's an interesting thing.

And cideries are just everywhere.

The kids are crazy about cideries.

Uh, you probably know if you listen to my guest much that we went for a week on

vacation to Asheville, North Carolina, and we spent an entire day going from

cidery to cidery outside of Asheville.

There are tons of them in Asheville, but we went to the ones out in the

hills and the hollers around Asheville.

We had such.

A great day tasting cider and looking out at the mountains.

Some of those places are just gorgeous.

And it didn't hurt that we found one of the best taco trucks to

have lunch at that we ever went to.

It was true.

We passed a taco truck and I was like, um, when we come back out of

the holler from the cidery, we're going to stop at this taco truck.

The taco truck yonder.

Yeah, yonder over yonder.

We're gonna stop at that over yonder.

Wait, I can do it.

When we come out of the holler We're gonna go out of that taca truck over yonder.

Excellent.

And you notice I said it correct for my mother, a taca.

A taca truck.

Taca truck.

So anyway, um, yeah, anyway, uh, it was great.

So the cideries are everywhere.

That's our podcast for this week.

Um, really, we've banged on enough.

So, um, Really, we've talked too much, but that's our podcast for this week.

Thanks for joining us.

We really appreciate your being with us.

Thanks for supporting us by rating and liking this podcast.

We appreciate yours.

And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food.

So go to our Facebook page, cooking with Bruce and Mark, share what's

making you happy in food this week so that we can share more food with you

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