 It is some Hunan deliciousness. It is something like that. That's a little bizarre for me. It looks weird, tastes amazing. The third episode of What Are You Actually Eating Chinese Edition brings us to South Central China. Hunan cuisine is famous for being fun to eat due to its focus on strong spicy sour chili and vinegar flavors, which many people often get confused with Sichuan food, especially since there is some crossover. There's also a very unique smoky grill flavor that some people attribute to techniques from the minority groups such as the Miao or Yao. Hunan food is quite possibly the hottest cuisine in China, so get ready for some dry hot Gan La flavors. Guys, kicking off our exploration into Hunan cuisine, aka Xiang Tai, you guys, we are looking at the Duozhao Quan Yu. Quan Yu meaning the whole fish, and normally this could be a split fish head that looks quite, I guess like anime-ish, but this one looks a little bit more, you know, just delicious. So you're just pulling the meat off right now. And what's very special about this dish is that it has a lot of pickled peppers. Now, a lot of pickled chilies in there, which is very indicative of Hunan cuisine, even more so than like Sichuan cuisine, which is more known for the Mala spices. Andrew, they're gonna use fermented peppers and then top it with fresh peppers and chilies at the same time. It's kind of reminds me of like matcha, you know, where they give you the matcha ice cream with the matcha drizzle and the matcha powder. Along with the traditional Hunan recipes, they also have some new modern Hunan-inspired cocktails. Cheers. Remember, both Hunan food and Sichuan food are gonna be oily, but Sichuan food's gonna be oilier. Hunan fish. Oh my goodness, guys. And I'm gonna show you guys how to flip the bone without flipping the fish. Oh, you gotta do. Shake more meat off, okay. We gotta take the bone out, guys. This is key. The bone in is gonna taste better. It's just like chicken wings. Right there. Oh, there you go. Got your fish head right here. This is what everybody wants. I'll tell you this. I had this dish a lot in LA. I had it in New York. I will say I think the one in New York's better simply because of the fish quality. Honestly, I can see why this leads off all the Hunan cuisine, like sort of like top 10 lists. Cause man, it's just good. I'm looking at a political dish. Oh, this is Mao's braised red pork dish. In Chinese, David, it is Mao's... No, no, no. You said Mao's Dong's Hong Shao Rou. It's Mao's Si Hong Shao Rou. But it's funny because Si is like style. So it's just like Mao style red braised pork. Right. And there's a lot of braised porks around China, but this one in particular is a little bit sweeter. Actually, I think that this is the best version of all the Hong Shao Rou's. And first of all, all Hong Shao Rou is better than Dong Po Rou, to be honest. But Mao's version is honestly particularly good. Honestly, this is one of my favorite Chinese dishes or favorite dishes in general, that I actually kind of stay away from just because of the level of potential, you know, caloric fat intake. But in terms of how much I enjoy it, every time I do, man, it's a five out of five. Birds-eye chilies. And I don't blame people for getting confused with Hunan and Sichuan food all the time because there's a lot of crossover dishes. At a lot of Hunan restaurants, you are going to get a lot of Sichuan dishes. But these dishes right here are a little bit more particularly specifically Hunan dishes. Guys, the next dish we have here is actually one of my favorite Hunan dishes. And this is not a Sichuan dish. This is strictly a Hunan dish because of its use of the 100-year-old century egg and eggplant and mortar-owned pestle. Let me tell you why I love this dish. It's when you mash up the duck egg inside of there, the yolk and everything else becomes a little bit creamier and it adds that kind of umami saltiness that you get. And then you tie it in with a little bit of kick from the green chilies. Man, man, this dish is just really unique. It works perfect when you put it over rice. Moving on, like we said, guys, you might be able to find stuff in Hunan you can find in other places, but they won't put that exact brine and combination of chilies and garlic on top like they do. I'm gonna go ahead and call Andrew Hunan like the Smoke House region. Central Asian foods, then I gotta say that Hunan is the smokiest of the smoky. Yeah, they are the duck egg people. On a simple level, that's even better. Like the flavors are less complex, but that is good. This is like a minced up garlic with a lot of preserved chili oil. It's really good, guys. I'm not saying that there's a test of being Chinese, nor should there be one, but one of them would be, do you like pitan? All right, moving on to our carb exploration of the Hunan province. And Andrew, Hunan actually has three different styles within its sub-genres. This is getting a little complicated on you guys. Of xiangtai, that's the whole thing. There is a hengyang style. There is a dongting style, and there is a west Hunan style. But most places in America, and even in Hunan, might specialize in a mix of those. Right, I think most Hunan restaurants in America are just gonna be like your catch-all Hunan restaurants. And of course, they're gonna serve some Sichuan dishes probably, too, because that's just gonna expand the menu. So here, this first dish, we have the Hunan Lu Fun. And this is gonna be a rice noodle dish, but it's not a soup rice noodle dish. It's more of a dry style, and its distinct features are definitely going to be these little pickled peppers right here. And Mindy was telling us that they really focused on cooking that flavor into the noodles. So it's not just almost like an add-on. Hunan Lu Fun. Deceivingly spicy is a good way to describe a lot of Hunan food, to be honest. Because the fresh chilies, you're not gonna be able to tell how much heat they actually spread into a dish. Okay, so here we have the Shang Xi Chao Fan. And a lot of people are thinking, you're saying Shang Chi, or you're saying Shang Xi, like the provinces? So it's X-I-A-N-G, X-I. So I think this is referring to the Western part of Hunan, which we said has a lot of ethnic group influence rather than just only Han influence. Now this fried rice is gonna be really good because there's little pieces of pork belly fat and kind of like a smoked bacon inside. And then you're gonna have ha-ha return of your little chopped pickled chilies right there. And that's what makes it different than other fried rice. That is a banger. This fried rice is incredible. I'm, man, for me, dude, the addition of the smoked bacon lauron, crazy. All right, wrapping it up at our first spot and we're ending off with something sweet. This is called Tangyobaba. And this is, you know, something that you can kind of get in that entire region, but it's own unique Hunan take. You know, because I had something similar in Chengdu. We're not gonna acknowledge the funny name. I don't know. As a person who barely speaks Chinese, I think it's funny. Right, right. Tangyobaba. A sugar oil daddy. Yeah. Oh my goodness, this is good. Yo, shout out to Sichuan. I love a lot of Sichuan dishes. But as far as this fried mochi goes, the Tangyobaba and Hunan is better. My two favorite dishes were this Hunan fish and the Hunan fried rice because they had visually looked something similar to something I'd seen before, but the flavor-wise was not, and it was kicked up a notch like that. My favorite two dishes here, I gotta go with Mao's braised red pork and then I gotta go with this duck egg and then I gotta go with the duck egg and eggplant mortar and pestle. I mean, this dish, this is Mao's favorite dish and this is possibly coming from the ethnic groups over in Hunan, so I think it's extra cool. Here at Blue Willow, this was a great introduction to Hunan cuisine, guys. We got so much more to try. There are so many deep cut things here, there. Hopefully, by the end of this video, you will be able to tell the difference, particularly between Hunan and Sichuan dishes. Shang cuisine is considered one of the ancient eight culinary categories in China, but most people in the US know the Americanized versions created by chefs from Taiwan who personally add historical roots in Hunan. Hunan food is actually the root of a lot of American Chinese dishes like orange chicken or General So's, which do use Hunan flavors, but of course with a lot of adjustments to cater to Western taste buds. Andrew, our first dish kicking it off here at Hunan Slurp Shop is a Hunan yu dou fu tang. So in Hunan, Andrew, you can make this with fish heads, but here, obviously, you know, they're picking a more, I guess, mainstream cut of fish. And in classic Hunan style, you can see that, yes, there are red chili peppers that you would see also in Sichuan food, but you have these green peppers that are very, very prevalent in Hunan cuisine, particularly in Hengyang. Milky fish tofu soup. Yu dou fu tang. Woo! I'm getting, I love it because the fish is cooked perfectly and it's very tender, but even the tofu is even more tender. So now you got a tender and a tender texture. Two last things about the soup. Number one, it is deceivingly hot and spicy, but number two, I think it's very interesting that you have different textures here. Soft tofu, soft fish here, and in a very milky broth, there's a lot of white pepper, a lot of ginger and onion in there. 100%, man. This soup is easy to drink. It's nice, it's not too salty and not too peppery. It is a perfect combination. The next dish up here at Hunan Slurp is the PJO Ya. This translates directly to beer duck. Andrew, this is a very simple dish. What you see pretty much, you got the duck, you got the beer, you've got star anise, you've got different types of chilies in there. So the story of this is that, this was born along the Sichuan Hunan border region, went some drunken customers one day, just went into like a casserole duck spot and just poured the beer in on accident and they just discovered that it just tastes better. They did not cut this duck up in like sumptuous pieces almost like the way Kanto people do. Like these are bony and irregular, but in a good way. What do you think about how this dish, they said that it was invented in the 90s. Kind of interesting, huh? So whether this is more of a Sichuan dish or Hunan dish, it is done in the Hunan style with the mixture of green and red chilies. Andrew, you are looking at a Hengyang local recipe. So, you know, Xiangtai is made up of three different zones. That means Hunan food has like three different sectors. This is from the Hengyang sector because obviously most stuff here at Hunan Slurp represents that zone. This is called Hengyang Tengjiaoji. Essentially, this is a chicken pepper stir fry. That's the name in English. And I think actually a lot of Hunan chicken dishes that you find at, you know, maybe more mainstream Hunan restaurants. American Hunan. Yeah, that are gonna be based off of this dish. But as you can see, you can go through with a spoon, a whole spoonful of just picking up garlic and chilies and you have the different kinds. Look at these gigantic pieces of ginger we keep running into, David. These are part of the dish. You're not supposed to avoid these. Just eat them. Finally, we secured a bowl of Mi Fan rice. That way I could place it on the side. One quick tip, David, don't eat too fast. You gotta watch out for the bones. Hengyang stir fry chicken. Surprise, surprise. This dish is obviously very, very authentic to the Hengyang region. This tastes more like American Chinese food than you would think because of the presence of the chicken with the celery, which is something that a lot of American Chinese restaurants since the 1940s have been doing. Andrew, we are looking at the Fenggang Niu Rou. This is a dry stir-fried pepper beef with cumin on top. Now, Andrew, when you type in Hoonan beef into an American Google search in English, you get something that almost looks like Mongolian beef with more peppers. But this is actually the original root version. Right, and I could see because for Americans they're gonna want more sauciness, more graviness, more of that general tenderness, but this is dried like what looks to be beef shank, kind of like the one that often comes in cold slices. And then it's stir-fried with a lot of cumin and pepper. I would say to myself, included the Western eye, this just looks like stir-fried jerky. Yeah, this is the real Hoonan beef. Fenggang Niu Rou. Does that taste like a yang rou chong? I've never heard anything like this. Andrew, I'm not gonna lie. This dish wins the sleeper of Hoonan slurp award for me because when I looked at it, you know, I wouldn't say I was like immediately drawn to it, but when I started eating it, it was like a five out of five. This is an amazing dish. You guys, you very seldom leave, and I don't mean to be cocky when I say this. See me on camera, have a dish for the first time. This is it. Next up, Andrew, we have the woshen si chao lao rou. Wow. This is like lettuce stems, right, with smoked pork. These are shredded lettuce stems that are steamed first, then stir-fried with the Chinese bacon. Have you ever had this before? I know that we've had the chao lao rou. We've had this smoky bacon portion. We have not had this woshen si. Yo, this smoky Chinese bacon is very, very Hoonan. There's all these other dishes that they do. They stir-fry them with peppers and stuff like that, and it's just so good. How full to say? Woshen si chao lao rou. Chao lao rou. Chao lao rou. Woshen si chao lao rou. Man, this is smokier than Snoop Dogg or the Texas BBQ, man. I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is the low-key, smokiest thing I've ever eaten in my entire life. We are looking at some shi bao tai. Wow, that means hand-torn cabbage stir-fried with Chinese bacon, man. And you know what? You heard of hand-torn noodles, but you can tell that these are actually hand-torn lettuce. This is the greatest cabbage dish maybe in the world. Like just pure cabbage. This is the best dish. If you define greatest by most delicious. Because cabbage, not really known to be that good. Guys, I've had a lot of cabbage dishes, you know, from Europe and even other parts of Asia. This is the most delicious cabbage dish I've ever had in my entire life. Honestly, guys, everything was really, really strong here at Hunan Slurp. Shout out to Chao Wang, you know, repping, you know, heng yang pretty strong in terms of being the Hunan purist of Manhattan. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, when you think of Hunan restaurants, you don't usually think of them to be in such a decorated and fancy and kind of futuristic looking restaurant. But guys, it's 2022 now. The future is here. And you know what's interesting Andrew? They don't actually serve any of the banquet foods here. Like you can't get the Hunan spicy fish head. You can't get Miles Brains pork. You know, they're serving like a little bit like less known dishes. Yeah, and I appreciate it guys. I think that cool restaurants with cool decor can serve a little bit weirder dishes. They also have frog here, they have duck tongue. Those are obviously meats that, you know, your average American is not going to want to order. Even your average American born Chinese is not going to order the duck tongue and the frog, to be honest. It's not what I always go for, but man, the quality is crazy here. There's big chunks of garlic and ginger in almost every dish. The mixture of the red and green peppers is very indicative of Hunan food. And heng yang, that particular place, southern Hunan, flavors go hard. Honestly, my favorite was the fish soup and then the chicken with peppers, the authentic version. Cause we're seeing the authentic version of a couple of like American Hunan dishes here. These are actually my two favorite dishes and they look completely different. I like the lettuce stems with the Chinese bacon and then I like the dry stir fried beef and these wowed me guys, so. Listen guys, if you like the American Hunan style, don't stop liking it, but definitely come try some authentic heng yang provincial food. So why is an authentic Hunan food more popular in America? It's got the bold flavor profiles that people like and it's already the origin of a lot of American Chinese dishes like General So's. Well, I think it's similar to tacos. The adoption of the authentic form will eventually take place, but people will still always enjoy the one that's been westernized. But you guys, we're here with Zach from Silky Kitchen. We are inside of the most authentic fast casual Hunan, you know, noodle shop in probably all of New York. How do you guys keep it authentic? When you have to make it fast casual for all types of people and make it cheap, how do you do it? Cause I know that a lot of Hunan people are always saying, oh, it's difficult for us to get the ingredients, the chilies, the preserved vegetables, everything. Yeah, I probably like it. I don't know how to say it like this. It's really hard to gather all the materials at this moment in time, but we got our own ways to get the authentic. Have you found that a lot of different types of people like Hunan food and like the flavors? Because you know how a lot of people in America don't really know about what is the authentic Hunan food? They might just take a Sichuan or whatever. Actually, before I came to the store working for the store, I was really amazed like how can like a different kind of people really into the like pork liver or chicken gait or something like that. And that's a little bizarre for me, but people just love it. And especially like for our shrimp chop pork dumpling, people tell the other people about the dumpling just to come to our store. You know what I heard is super authentic about you guys is that in Hunan, different cities eat different types of rice noodles, but you guys have both the flat kind that is more popular. The flat one is more in Changsha and Changde, Hengyang, they eat more of the round kind. So you guys got the Changsha style and the Hengyang style. For a lot of people out there who get Sichuan food and Hunan food confused, what can you say is the easiest way to tell those types of cuisines apart? Like what's the main difference? To me personally, I think the Sichuan food is more about the ma feeling like the stinky to the tongue, but the Hunan food is more about the flavor, like the smell to the nose. So Sichuan food is more to the tongue and Hunan is more to the nose. Do you feel like that's a good way to put it, man? I called, you know what I said it was? I said it has a smoky grill vibe to Hunan food and Sichuan food is hot, but it doesn't necessarily have the smokiness or the charred grill flavor. And here's my thing that I noticed about Hunan food. It is deceivingly spicy where you don't always see all the heat in it because Sichuan food, you might see a layer of red oil which you know is hot, but Hunan food, sometimes you just see a few peppers green and red, and then the thing is spicy level, five out of five. Guys, just listen, Silky Kitchen is for everybody, but the five out of five spicy level, you gotta watch out. All right, you guys, we are looking at an incredible Hunan lunch feast here at Silky Kitchen in the East Village. What are we looking at, Zach? First of all, it's gonna be Hunan Jado, Hunan Fried Tofu. It's just like a fried tofu with, I say radish, pickle juice, and a little bit like a green onion as a garnish. Right, and there's a stinky version, right? There's a chou tofu version. Yeah, it's gotta be stinky version, but it's hard to do that in the United States. Yeah, well because it makes people run away. Yeah. All right, this is, you guys, it's famous, what, just regular, what do you have? This is our shrimp char prok down there. This is the cuttlefish and the red soup is like one of the Sen Teike Hunan breakfast or lunch, lunch options. This is the pork pepper, or in Chinese, Hunan xiao chao rou. Mm, rounder. Pork, and one of the most basic and delicious dishes. This is the backbone of all Hunan dishes and the backbone of a lot of productive Hunan people. This is the pig trotters, spicy pig trotters. So you get the taste of pig trotters without the look of pig trotters. This is the Hunan silk beef, or Hunan xiao chao niu, which is our most popular dishes among all of the stores. Also with a flat noodle. This is our beef trap salad, or liang ban niu du. It's like one of the, like, pretty popular, like, appetite dishes. And that's the fried shrimp beans. It's like a wall-over, like, green stuff. And that's the sweet part, the sweet rice cake, totally homemade. And then, of course, this is not a bean fun, but it looks like it. This is the sweet pro-flav jelly. It's like a Chinese version of jello. Listen, guys, I feel like I'm in China and I feel like I'm in Changsha, Hunan right now. I got the flat rice noodles. I've got the large pork ribs. Yo, I feel like a salary man in Hunan right now. Here is the xiao chao roll. Xiao chao roll, man. This is the backbone of all Hunan dishes and productivity, to say the least. All right, this is the Hunan fried tofu. Ooh, it almost looks like a little xiao long bao, like, eating a sponge. This might be putting the silky and silky kitchen, because the tofu inside is very silky. The outside is crispy. It's kind of fluffy. It's almost like a fried tofu pastry. This Hunan fried tofu melts in your mouth like a crispy cream. This is the crispy cream of fried tofu. Honestly, guys, this was beyond a five out of five. I'm going to go ahead and give this the 10 out of 10, because, you know, sometimes something's a 9.5, but we rounded up. This is a little bit more accurate. This Hunan tofu is a 10 out of 10. Hunan dumplings. My major takeaway from silky kitchen is I think that this gaima, which is this style of, like, toppings on either round noodles or flat noodles, is actually has a huge ceiling. I think that nobody knows about it right now. It's, like, probably only popular in Hunan. Even when I've traveled around China to, like, places outside of Hunan, they don't really have it that prevalent. So I think that the sky's the limit, because this is an amazing lunch food in its flavor pack. It doesn't weigh you down too much. Like we said, they still utilize all the classic Shanghai techniques, which is, like, that burst fire wok, you know? I think it's really cool how Hunan food turned out to be a very, very good lunch food, you know? Obviously, if you're sensitive to spices, watch out. But, I mean, honestly, it's not that oily, and, you know, you can just put toppings over noodles so it works really well. So shout out to Silky Kitchen. by spreading Hunan culture across New York City. I don't want to fully just put, like, the confirmation stamp on it, but I think Hunan food might get the award for most underrated food province in China. I don't know, guys. Well, as we do more of these, I'll revisit this question, but I think it's possible that Hunan could be the most underrated province for food. Sichuan food already went mainstream, so I think it's only a matter of time that people discover the wonders of Hunan food. I personally put them on the same level, so try authentic versions of both and see for yourself.