This chile crisp makes it dinner
Heat, crunch, and much more.
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Of all the bits you might find drifting through a jar of chile crisp — peanuts, fried garlic and shallots, Szechuan peppercorns, cumin, cardamom, anise, sesame seeds, ginger, anchovies, seaweed, mushroom powder — the soybeans are my favorite.
What at first seems like a stubborn pebble gives way to a dense, yielding chew, somewhere between a refrigerated raisin and a pencil eraser (though much more delicious than both). Because the soybeans are fermented, they ripple another layer of savoriness through the chile crisp.
Today’s recipe, a homemade chile crisp, delivers my favorite soybean bite in an outsized way. It uses tempeh because it’s also a fermented soybean with chew and mushroomy depth, though because it’s made differently, it doesn’t have the same intense salt kick.
It also happens to be rich in both protein and fiber, which means that a bowl of rice glossed with just this chile crisp can satisfy, even without an egg, vegetables, tofu, or chicken — though all those things would be good too. As if chile crisp wasn’t already doing enough for us, slicking slumbering food with heat and crunch and savor, turns out it can offer some nourishment, too.
