We're long on leftovers, so no major cooking today but reserves were running low, so I used what would have been meal prep time to mix up another batch of Gary's chile oil . . .
Mise En Place & Takeda Stainless Clad Cleaver, SmallPeanut oil, sesame oil, fermented black beans, minced garlic, smashed Sichuan peppercorns, smashed garlic cloves, minced ginger, gochugara & red chile flakes.
On the knife side, with a mess of ginger and dozens of cloves of garlic to smash and mince, the Takeda cleaver was the perfect tool. Mass smashing, easy mincing and swift removal from the board.
When I ran out of red chile flakes in the midst of making this last time, I filled in with gochugaru and really liked the results. So, this time it's in there by design. 7.5 cups of the peanut oil, a scant 1 cup of the sesame oil and the rest of all this goes into a cold dutch oven and heats slowly over low heat. Stir frequently and once it starts to bubble, keep stirring until the smashed garlic pieces are soft and translucent from oil absorption. I don't really know how long that is in minutes. You can just kind of tell when it's there. Once it's there, I generally just turn off the flame and let it cool down in the dutch oven. After that, jar it up . . .
Jarred UpThe large jar will be for home use. One of the jelly jars will be for my desk at the office. The others, I'll be distributing to friends, etc.
=R=
Same planet, different world