Chili Crisp Oil With Fried Garlic

Hello! Hi everyone, Wesley here. Today we're diving back into our series dedicated to the wonderfully diverse array of small plates, side dishes, condiments, and accompaniments that are essential to pan-asian cuisine with a dive into the housemade chili oil found at the Woo Can Cook pop ups here in the Bay Area. For those out of the loop, earlier this week David Chang and his brand Momofuku got a bit of backlash after attempting to trademark the term "chili crunch," which of course is pretty silly for many reasons (mainly because chili crisp oil has existed long before Momofuku existed).

In any case, amidst this chili crisp/chili crunch/chili oil craze, I thought this might be the appropriate time to FINALLY dive into a recipe video that I have been promising folks for quite some time now, which is the chili oil that we make in-house and sell at the Woo Can Cook pop ups, affectionately known by our crew as "the good sh*t." For those unfamiliar, chili crisp oil more broadly refers to the condiment often included in pan-asian stir fries defined by an aromatic oil with chili flake steeped into the hot oil yielding its bright red color. Although most Asians will likely agree that the definitive chili oil is the one with the old grandma on the label, known as "lao gan ma," in more recent times, you may have seen a number of folks producing their own versions of "chili oil," all varying on the same theme. So! For our own attempt here today, I'm going to address a couple of the issues that I personally have with most other chili oils that I've found on the market, which is that most contain far too much MSG, which in turn makes the condiment more salty than aromatic, which is a shame because the oil itself is jam packed full of aromatic spices. Hope you try it.