Clear Your Fridge (and Sinuses) With Mala Dry Pot

Peek into my fridge midweek and you’ll find a wilting garden of sorts. Forgottenbroccolistems, strewn carrots stalks, and lonely boiled potatoes pose an impossible leftovers riddle. And I don’treallywant to deal with a half-eaten tub of firm tofu or abandoned pot of udon noodles.

Rather than snack on raw vegetables or cast partial ingredients into the waste bin, I’m partial to a solution that goes beyond a classic sauté or motley salad. It’s a perfect opportunity to transform these fridge scraps into a fiery, sinus-clearing stir-fry known as mala xiang guo.

Mala xiang guois a medley of vegetables, starches, and proteins stir-fried in a numbing spice-infused oil. This Chinese dish comes from a lineage of dry-style techniques. You blanch and stir-fry the ingredients separately, infuse a spice oil, and then toss everything together in awok. Though many dry pots start with the same spice oil, additional sauces and condiments can be added to guide the flavor profile toward sour and spicy or funky and shrimpy.

Likely you’ve heard of mala, that tongue-tingling sensation coming from the petite Sichuan peppercorn. And it’s crucial to mala xiang guo, which translates literally to “numbing fragrant pot.” This dry pot may behot pot’s soupless cousin, but don’t mistake the lack of soup for lack of flavor. If anything, each bite comes with a wonderfully concentrated, tingly sensation from the spice oil thanks to the Sichuan peppercorns and chao tian jiao, or facing heaven peppers, and a dash of sweetness from the Shaoxing wine.

Sichuan Peppercorns

$5at Weee!

Facing Heaven Chiles

$12at The Mala Market

A quick glance at the ingredient list might make you think that the dish has origins in Chongqing or Sichuan, the birthplaces of mala flavors and famed dishes such as Chongqing mala hot pot and other spicy dry pots. In reality, its homeliesfarther north. Hongjie Wang, PhD, a history professor at Georgia Southern University who specializes in Sichuan cuisine, says that the dish actually appears to have originated in Beijing in the mid-2000s. Since then, mala xiang guo has traveled around the world to restaurants in Singapore, Los Angeles, and New York, and into home kitchens, where cooks can whip this stir-fry together in under 45 minutes.

Traditionally, a mala xiang guo includes popular Chinese ingredients such as lotus root, wood ear mushrooms, and glass noodles. But even with such a calculated recipe, mala xiang guo has no precise formula. Amelie Kang, the owner and force behindMálà Project, a restaurant in New York City, keeps a menu of 60-plus ingredients that you include in your custom order. Many of these ingredients—intestines, fish balls, and vegetables—replicate the menus of popular chains in China. But Kang cites an ingredient that home cooks might not think of adding to their wok: pineapple.

“Pineapple changes its flavor entirely. That's the only ingredient I’ve found that does that to the dry pot,” she says. “It makes a sweet savory spicy kind of combination.”

The possibilities for dry pot ingredients are endless, Kang adds, as long as they don’t fall apart in the wok—she recommends skipping silky ingredients like soft tofu or raw eggs. As for the more creative possibilities? “I’ve seen people put oyster, but I’m not a huge fan of that,” she says. “Then there are people who put instant noodles or ramen, and I think that’s brilliant.”

Hot Pot Base

$7at Amazon

As the nights turn frosty and the fridge begins to overflow, it’s this sizzling bowl of mala xiang guo that I have on speed dial. A quick peek in the fridge and atrulyoptional run to the grocery store are all I need to determine whether my dry pot will contain baby bok choy and tofu skin or pork belly and baby corn. In my own kitchen, I add as little as three or four dry pot ingredients and as many as 12. Using a store-bought Sichuan hot pot base and doubanjiang saves time too.

The sheer flexibility in the ingredients also makes this dish the star of a family-style meal orLunar New Yearspread. During the holiday, my family comes together and stages an elaborate dinner of shareable plates. DIY hot pot, a fun and communal option, is already a popular choice. But this year I’ll be switching it up with mala xiang guo. And what a flavorful, festive spread it will be: numbing dry pot scarfed down in multiple servings, boxed chrysanthemum tea and zha cai to chill our fiery mouths, and sticky nian gao sweets before we drift off to sleep.

Mala Xiang Guo (Mala Dry Pot)

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