Douban Jiang Taste Test: eggplant cooked with Pixian style, mystery sauce, Lee Kum Kee
Jimmy Lau, a Chinese-born chef who works at a Japanese omakase restaurant in NYC, pranked the New York Times when interviewed for the feature on how he spends his Sunday. Describing some culinary experimentation he does with his nephew, also a chef, he says “I’m really into a Chinese chili paste made with broad beans called doubanjiang. It gives any meat or fish a really nice spiciness, along with a touch of sourness.”
What’s the prank? If you know Sichuan cooking unike me, you realize that statement is like a guy who sells French fries saying he’s experimenting with a new topping called ketchup. Doubanjiang, aka tobanjang or chili bean sauce, is ubiquitous in spicy dishes like eggplant with garlic or mapo dofu. It’s as common as dirt, though more delicious. Not realizing this, I scrambled to my local Asian market in search of a new treat … and ended up with an interesting taste test as well.
Mystery Douban Jiang (or is it?)
The item I brought home* is what you see in the green container. There is no English on the label other than the ingredient list and it is misleading. It says the product contains wheat flour, margarine, white sugar, corn syrup… a fools paradise of bad-for-you stuff. But it also says “1 serving per bottle” and said serving contains 240 mg of sodium when you’d get that in a teaspoon full. In other words, the container is mislabeled. Wonder where this label was supposed to go? In fact the stuff is brown and spicy and does contain beans though they are cooked to falling-apart softness.
Expensive Pixian Douban is worth it
Still doubting I had the right product, I did as anyone might and went to Amazon. There I found Pixian Broad Bean Paste which according to malafoods meets the stringent certification requirements of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China (AQSIQ). Can’t beat that.
Then by chance I found in my pantry Lee Kum Kee chili bean sauce, which I’d purchased by mistake thinking it was sriracha type chili sauce. This is recommended by some as a readily available form of doubanjiang and in fact the label calls it toban djan.
Lee Kum Kee… not good
How did they taste? To find out, I made a typical recipe for Chinese eggplant with garlic waiting till the last minute to add the doubanjiang. The Lee Kum Kee was definitely the worst, brassy and one dimensional with an overpowering salty taste. The mystery box was pretty good. But the Pixian, which costs 4 times as much with Amazon Prime, was definitely worth it with a bright, complex taste and a barely-ground texture so you could pick out individual bits of chili skins and mashed beans.
Like Jimmy Lau, I’m interested in experimenting with this new ingredient and may add a dash of it to, for example, sautéed Italian greens. I’ve got enough to last me awhile.
*On a return trip to the Asian Supermarket, I found an easy two dozen variations of doubanjiang. Just dumb luck I ended up with this one the first time.
