The chili oil your takeout wishes it had

Hand-toasted in small batches from a Northeast Chinese family recipe. Crisp chili, Sichuan pepper, and enough garlic to matter. Good on everything you already eat.

$16.00 8 oz jar · about 40 servings
Add to cart Taste the difference
  • Made by hand, 40 jars a batch
  • Six ingredients. Nothing else.
  • Ships in 1–2 days
  • Love it or your money back

I've put this on everything for three weeks. Eggs will never be the same.

Marisol R. · Verified buyer
12,000+ Jars sold
4.9 Average rating
6 Ingredients
40 Jars per batch
Why it tastes different

Most chili oil is made by a machine. This one isn't.

Grocery store chili oil is blended cold, thinned with soybean oil, and sits in a warehouse for a year. We toast ours in a wok, in batches small enough to smell when they're ready.

Toasted, not blended

Hot oil is poured over the chili in three stages, by hand. The first pass blooms the aroma, the last one sets the crunch. A machine can't feel when that moment is.

Chili that came from somewhere

Erjingtiao chili for fragrance, Sichuan peppercorn for the tingle. Both sourced whole and toasted the morning we make the batch, not bought pre-ground.

No filler oil

No soybean oil, no thickeners, no MSG, no preservatives. Six ingredients. If you can't pronounce it, it isn't in the jar.

Restaurant ratio

Twice the solids of supermarket brands. You're spooning up chili crisp and garlic, not fishing for it at the bottom.

Made to order

Forty jars a batch, shipped within days of being made. Chili oil is best in its first few months and we'd rather you tasted it then.

A recipe with a family attached

This is the oil that sat on our table growing up in Northeast China. It has not been reformulated for the American palate.

How to use it

Start with eggs. Then stop being careful.

It behaves like a finishing salt: a spoonful at the end of cooking, not the beginning. Most people go through the first jar in three weeks.

Fried eggs

The gateway

Cold noodles

Ten minutes

Dumplings

Where it began

Steak

Trust us

Rice and a fried egg

Dinner in six minutes

Pizza

Better than the packet

Roast vegetables

Makes broccoli worth it

Ramen

Instant, upgraded
Get a jar
The people who make it

It started as the jar we kept for ourselves

We opened a dumpling shop. The chili oil was never meant to be the point — it sat on the counter in an unlabeled jar, made on Sunday mornings the way our mother made it in Jilin, because none of the ones we could buy tasted right.

Customers started asking for it. Then asking to buy it. Then bringing their own containers.

So we started jarring it. Same wok, same recipe, same three-stage pour. We haven't changed the formula and we're not going to.

Our mother never wrote it down. We learned it by standing next to her and being told when the oil looked ready. The Lao Ma kitchen
Read the full story
What's in the jar

Six ingredients, and a reason for each one

Nothing here is filler. Take any one out and it stops tasting like our mother's.

Erjingtiao chili

The chili that gives Sichuan cooking its smell rather than its burn. Moderate heat, high aroma, and a red that comes out of the pepper instead of out of a bottle. We buy them whole and toast them the morning of the batch.

Origin
Sichuan
What it does
Fragrance and deep red colour
The honest comparison

Why it costs more than the supermarket jar

Lao Ma Supermarket chili oil
Batch size 40 jars, made to order Industrial runs, warehoused
Base oil Cold-pressed rapeseed Soybean or blended oil
Chili Whole, toasted same day Pre-ground, months old
Sichuan peppercorn Yes — that's the tingle Usually omitted
Ingredient count Six Twelve to twenty
MSG, preservatives None Commonly both
Solids to oil Roughly half the jar A thin layer at the bottom
Time from wok to you Days Six to twelve months
What people say

The reorder rate is the review we care about

I bought it for dumplings and now I'm putting it on scrambled eggs, avocado toast, and once, regrettably but deliciously, ice cream. Third jar.
Marisol R. Verified
I grew up eating my grandmother's version and I've never found one in a store that came close. This one does. The peppercorn is actually there.
Danny K. Verified
Warning: the crunch-to-oil ratio ruins other brands for you permanently. I tried going back to the supermarket one and couldn't.
Priya S. Verified
Bought it as a gift, opened it 'just to check', ended up ordering two more and keeping the original. Not sorry.
Tom W. Verified
Heat is medium — noticeable but you can eat a spoonful. It's more fragrant than hot, which is exactly what I wanted.
Aiko M. Verified
The garlic. That's it, that's the review. Whatever they're doing to the garlic, don't stop.
Jordan P. Verified

Scroll for more →

Before you ask

Questions we actually get

How spicy is it, really?

Medium. Around a 5 out of 10 — you'll feel it, but you can eat a spoonful straight without regretting your life. The Sichuan peppercorn adds a numbing tingle that reads as more complex than hot. Kids usually handle it on rice.

How long does it keep?

Six months unopened in a cool cupboard, and about three months once opened. It won't spoil after that so much as slowly lose its aroma. Most people finish a jar in three to four weeks.

Does it need refrigerating?

No. Keep it in the cupboard. Refrigerating makes the oil cloudy and solid — harmless, but annoying. Use a dry spoon each time and it'll be fine.

When will it arrive?

We ship within one to two business days, and most orders arrive in three to six. You'll get tracking as soon as it leaves the kitchen.

What if I don't like it?

Tell us within 30 days and we'll refund you — you don't need to send the jar back. We'd rather know than have you quietly not reorder.

Is there MSG, gluten, or nuts?

No MSG, no gluten, no nuts, no preservatives. Six ingredients: erjingtiao chili, Sichuan peppercorn, garlic, cold-pressed rapeseed oil, toasted sesame, sea salt. It's vegan.

What do I put it on first?

Eggs. Fry one, spoon the oil over while it's hot, and you'll understand the rest without our help. After that: rice, noodles, dumplings, roast vegetables, steak, pizza.

Why is it more expensive than the jar at the store?

Whole chilies toasted the day of, real Sichuan peppercorn, cold-pressed rapeseed instead of soybean oil, and forty jars a batch instead of forty thousand. It costs more to make. There's a full breakdown above.

One jar, one recipe

Put it on eggs tomorrow morning

Made this week, shipped this week. If it isn't the best chili oil in your kitchen, we'll refund you and you can keep the jar.

Add to cart —

Free shipping over $45 · Ships in 1–2 days · 30-day guarantee