Introducing The Best Chilli Oil in London From MamaLan

A quick search on the internet reveals that, as a nation, we Brits are a little bit obsessed by Chilli Oil and how to make it. With almost 63 million (yes, you read that right) search results for ‘chilli oil recipe’, it’s all a bit overwhelming.

At MamaLan we love the good things in life and chilli is certainly high up on our list, so we’ve taken the pain away (unless you eat a bit too much) from having to find the best recipe and making your own oil. You can now buy our oil ready to use.

 

Introducing MamaLan’s Chilli Oil

 

The signature sauce in our new retail range is our Chilli Oil. It’s the foundation of many of the dishes we cook in our restaurant, giving the perfect amount of heat and sweetness to take any dish to another level of delicious. Chilli is a relatively well-known spice, but we think there are one or two things you may not know about chilli.

 

What is Chilli?

Chilli is short for chilli pepper, which is the fruit from plants in the Capsicum genus and originates from South and Central America. Chillies come in a range of colours, sizes and, of course, intensity.  The heat of a chilli pepper is measured on a scale called the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) and measures the level of capsaicin, the substance which gives chillies their heat and ability to burn your lips off.

 

The hottest chillies on the planet

The Scoville scale has the common bell pepper at 0 SHU since these do not contain capsaicin. A mid-range pepper is Cayenne which is often used in powdered form to flavour dishes and comes in at around 30,000 -50,000 SHU. Moving up a level, you come to the Bird’s Eye chilli at around 100,000-350,000 SHU. However, that’s nothing compared to the current official hottest chilli called Carolina Reaper from the US which weighs in at 2.2M SHU – woah, better be careful with that one!

 

What else goes into Chilli Oil?

The main ingredient in most chilli oil is the carrier oil. At MamaLan we use Rapeseed Oil as this has a mild flavour which doesn’t clash with the chilli. Each recipe you find will use its own blend of spices and other ingredientto produce a unique finished product, but this is likely to include salt, vinegar, garlic and onion.Our Chilli Oil is the basis for many of the dishes on the MamaLan menu, particularly out Chicken Wings, Baos, dumplings and classic rice dishes. We like to add it to pretty much everything where we can to get that kick of heat, but we also offer less spicy options for those who can’t manage hot foods.

 

What’s different about MamaLan’s Chilli Oil?

MamaLan has its own secret recipe for Chilli Oil which creates the perfect heat to complement most dishes. Our sauce contains other spices to give the distinctive MamaLan vibe. We were asked so often in the restaurants about the Chilli Oil that we decided to offer it as a retail product and now we have four great sauces to tempt you with.

 

So how can you use our oil at home?

Our Chilli Oil will shortly be available to purchase online from our website and via Amazon as well as in our restaurants in London, so you can recreate the taste of MamaLan at home. It goes brilliantly with meat, poultry, fish and seafood so you will not be short of dishes. We’re created some simple yet tasty recipes using the MamaLan range for you to try at home.

Start small until you get used to the heat – you can always add more, but you can’t take it out.

 

Is Chilli Oil vegan?

With the growing popularity of the vegan diet, many of our customers want to know if our Chilli Oil is vegan and the answer is yes.This means all the ingredients have been quality checked to ensure that no part of the process is within the meat industry.We only use the best quality ingredients in our sauces because we care about our customers and the environment too.

 

5 things you never knew about chilli

1. Chilli speeds up digestion by raising the core body temperature.
2. Generally, the smaller a chilli pepper is, the hotter it is.
3. Fresh red chillies are usually 2-3 times hotter than green chillies.
4. Chilli was brought to the rest of the world by Christopher Columbus who discovered America in 1493.
5. In early civilisations such as the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs chilli peppers were used as a currency.

 

If you would like to try our Signature Chilli Oil for yourself, order our Chilli Chicken Wings, Dumplings or any of our Noodle Soups for that gorgeous hit of flavour. We can also tone down or dial up the heat – whatever you prefer.

We offer Click and Collect from our restaurants in Brixton Village and Clapham, or Deliveroo online ordering. If you are collecting your meal, you can add a bottle of sauce to your order, so you can cook up your own Mamalan style feast at home.

 

Perhaps you prefer a little more sweetness and a bit of tang – find out about our Pineapple Sriracha sauce.

 

Next time we’ll be looking at another of our sauces – the Sweet Sesame Dressing – drizzlicious!