Green Sichuan pepper

Poivre de Sichuan vert

What it is

A different species from the red huajiao, picked while the husks are still green. The tingle comes from hydroxy-alpha-sanshool, which does not act on taste at all: it fires the mouth’s touch receptors at around fifty vibrations a second, so what you register is a frequency rather than a flavour.

In the kitchen

Heat kills it. Warm the husks in oil at about 100 °C for a minute, strain, and use the green oil cold over noodles or poached chicken — scorched, it stops tingling and turns bitter.

Goes with

Chicken Cucumber Soy sauce Rice vinegar Chili pepper Toasted sesame oil Spring onion Ginger

Same species

Andaliman Hana-sanshō (sanshō flower buds) Kinome (sanshō leaf) Sansho pepper Sichuan pepper Green Sichuan pepper oil

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