China · Sichuan
Sizzling Spicy Bullfrog
Bullfrog flashed in hot oil and then braised in beer with pickled ginger and chili until the flesh is slippery and the sauce numbing.
The nickname means screaming, and it refers to the chili heat rather than to the frogs. Bullfrog is eaten across much of southern China, and the versions differ mainly in which pickled aromatics the cook reaches for. Blanching the frog briefly in hot oil before it goes into the sauce is what keeps the flesh from turning rubbery, and it is the step most often left out.
Ingredients
- bullfrog pieces800 g
- pickled gingerExact
- pickled chiliExact
- pickled wild chili10 g
- green and red chili20 g
- garlicExact
- fermented chili bean pasteExact
- salt15 g
- ground white pepper10 g
- beerExact
- cooking wine10 ml
- green Sichuan pepper oilExact
- cornstarch30 g
- lard20 ml
- cooking oil200 ml
- chopped scallion5 g
Directions
- 1
Rinse the bullfrog pieces, drain them well, then add more than ten grams of salt and more than fifty milliliters of beer and work the meat with your hands for five minutes to draw off any gaminess.
- 2
Rinse them under cold water until no blood or impurities run out, drain, place in a suitable vessel and get ready to marinate.
- 3
Add five grams of salt, thirty grams of cornstarch, ten milliliters of cooking wine and five grams of white pepper, mix by hand to combine and marinate for five to ten minutes.
- 4
Shred or slice the pickled ginger, pickled chili and pickled wild chili depending on your knife work; cut the green and red chili into rings and peel the garlic cloves.
- 5
Heat the wok, add two hundred milliliters of oil, more if your pan has a flat base, and heat it to sixty percent, when small bubbles appear. Add the marinated bullfrog, flash-fry and lift out after ten seconds; any longer and the meat turns tough.
- 6
After removing the frog, drain the oil and pour it into a bowl, keeping thirty milliliters in the wok, then add twenty milliliters of lard. Without lard, keep a total of fifty milliliters of oil in the pan instead.
- 7
At sixty percent heat add the pickled ginger, pickled chili, pickled wild chili and garlic and fry until fragrant, then add twenty grams of fermented chili bean paste and stir-fry over medium heat until the oil turns red, about thirty seconds, and pour in four hundred milliliters of beer.
- 8
Add the fried bullfrog back in, pushing it around with a spoon rather than stirring hard, then add five grams of white pepper and five milliliters of green Sichuan pepper oil and simmer over medium heat for three minutes.
- 9
Raise the heat and reduce for half a minute, add the chili rings and cook for another ten seconds before turning off the heat.
- 10
Serve in a bowl, scatter over the chopped scallion and dig in.
Source: HowToCook · WorldBite adaptation · Unlicense source text; bilingual recipe adapted by WorldBite.