Ask any Chinese home cook for their top 10, and you'll get a list built around one thing: something that makes plain steamed rice disappear fast. Here are ten Sichuan-leaning classics that do exactly that.
1. Mapo tofu (麻婆豆腐)
Silken tofu in a tingling, chili-oil sauce. Twenty minutes, one pan, endless rice.
2. Kung pao chicken (宫保鸡丁)
Diced chicken, peanuts, dried chilies — sweet, sour, and gently numbing at once.
3. Twice-cooked pork (回锅肉)
Boiled then pan-fried pork with leeks and doubanjiang. The original Sichuan rice-killer.
4–10: build your own
Fish-fragrant eggplant, ants-on-a-log (silverfish), Sichuan-style green beans, tea-smoked duck, dan dan noodles, spicy boiled beef, and scallion pancakes to mop it all up.
💡 Every dish above links to a full bilingual recipe on HǎoWèi — ingredients tagged local vs Asian, with substitutions for whatever your supermarket is missing.
The through-line
Most share a base of doubanjiang (豆瓣酱), garlic, and ginger. Master that trio and the whole list opens up.
