Malatang (Spicy Numbing Soup)

Variations

• Mala xiangguo: The dry, stir-fried version with no broth.
• Milder: Cut the peppercorn and doubanjiang and add a splash of milk or soy milk.
• Tomato mala: Add tomato for a tangy broth (currently popular).
• Your pick: Noodles, shrimp, beef, mushrooms — choose your own ingredients freely.

Tips

• It is a hot pot with the eater taken out of it, and that is what the first tip below is for. Huoguo describes this dish in its own words: "to scale it down to one person, make the base and cook single bowls from it like malatang." At a hot pot table the sequencing is continuous and performed by the diner — each thing goes in and comes out when it is ready — and shabu-shabu states the order at the table for you: "add what takes longest first: carrot, then cabbage ribs, then tofu and king oyster, then shirataki." Malatang deletes the table. One basket goes into one pot on one timing, so the order of entry stops being advice and becomes the method.
• Which is also why the noodles are soaked before they ever meet the pot. Dry sweet-potato noodles take longer than anything else in the bowl, so put in dry that one ingredient sets the time for everything else. Soaking moves their cooking outside the single window. Why they belong in a bowl of broth at all is on japchae's page: a high-amylose starch that "sets clear and stays chewy", where a wheat noodle sitting in hot liquid only goes soft.
• The milk in the mild version is a table-side remedy moved into the pot. Chilli and heat: capsaicin dissolves in fat and not in water, and casein binds it and carries it off — which is why India serves lassi alongside and Thailand coconut milk. Put it into the broth instead and it lowers the heat of the dish rather than soothing the eater afterwards. It only answers half of this pot, though. Huoguo separates them — "la (heat) is the dried chilli; ma (numbing) is the Sichuan peppercorn" — and the numbing comes from sanshool, an alkylamide rather than capsaicin (romazava files it with mafana in the same family). Dairy does nothing to that. The only dial for ma is the huajiao itself.
• Add ingredients in order of cooking time — meat and corn first, vegetables and noodles last.
• Soak the sweet potato noodles ahead so they cook fast and stay chewy.
• Sichuan peppercorn (huajiao) gives the tingling 'ma' — add it late so the aroma survives.
• Adjust the heat with the amount of sauce and chili oil; start light.
• Store-bought base is a 10-minute dish; from scratch is deeper.