If, like me, you love Sichuan (even if you spell it ‘Szechuan’) food, you know doubanjiang, even if you spell it ‘to banjyan,’ or even call it ‘chili bean paste.’ It’s the primary flavoring ingredient in ma po dofu . . . now matter how you spell that 🙂 which is probably my favorite Sichuan dish, or is it maybe dan-dan noodles? Both iconic, both delicious . . .

In any case, ‘chili bean paste’ is a bit of a misnomer, because that makes it sound like doubanjiang is made from chili beans, when in fact it’s made from fava (but you can spell that broad) beans, which are fermented along with chilis (but you can spell that chiles). Cheaper brands are made from soybeans, but the real thing, and one indication of quality, is that fava beans are used.

For a long time I’ve been using the Lee Kum Kee brand:

If you’re new to Chinese food, or even have some experience, and find yourself overwhelmed at your local Asian market, the ‘Lee Kum Kee’ products are always a good default choice. Not necessarily the best, but far from the worst. I’ve been using their ‘Toban Djan’ for years . . .

Until I saw this:

Sichuang Sauce for Spicy Dishes? It’s a “G” better than Sichuan!

I’m still not sure what to call it – – number two seems less than appetizing, but here’s the cap:

. . . so I’m going to call it Super Lucky. I hadn’t tried it, since I was still working on my latest jar of LKK.

Then there’s the internet. And the internet mavens tell tales of a legendary ‘chili bean paste’ from the mythological land of Pixian, where the Chinese capitalist overlords haven’t wrenched away the fava beans from their hardly working vats of long-term (three months, at least) fermentation, only to replace them with quick blends that the Western suckers will buy into.

So, it seemed hardly possible that you could buy a pound of authentic ‘Pixian’ doubanjiang from Amazon for less than eight dollars, and in brief, well, read on . . . there was one surprise to this story.

Here are our contenders:

Immediate observation: contenders #1 and #2 look similar, whereas the Pixian is darker and chunkier. So, on to the taste test: the LKK is good. Super Lucky is, surprisingly (since it was the cheapest), better, much more of a citrus punch, I believe from the Sichuan pepper. Also quite a bit hotter. Pixian tastes almost the same as Super Lucky.

. . . but biting into the Pixian is also distressingly like chomping down on a mixture of paste and something like plastic, just hard bits of what seemed to be food but could have been anything. Nasty.

So, in the interest of science, I sacrificed 1-1/2 tablespoons of each. They were rinsed in a tea strainer:

and here’s the result.

The LKK, on the left, looks pretty gritty, but in fact all of the bits were pretty soft. Super Lucky Number 2 is more consistent in terms of size, but a bit (only a bit) tougher in texture. The big surprise was Pixian, which was horrible.

You can certainly see that it was made from peppers and beans, but, really, if this had been fermented properly, the ingredients shouldn’t be so blindingly obvious. Even the beans aren’t soft, and instead hard and pretty much inedible. I’m not sure where the flavor, which was good, came from – – but this is completely unusable, unless maybe you whizz it up in a blender. Big disappointment.

If you want a laugh, read the reviews on Amazon.

Oh, separate post for the mad po make!

-R