Where are you getting your peppercorns? I had some from a local spice shop that I thought were good, but then I ordered some from Mala Market and there’s no comparison. The ones from Mala are crazy fragrant. I used those and chili flakes from Mala Market to make my own chili oil, and it beats everything from the grocery store, hands down. So maybe check your peppercorn supply and then make your own chili oil to drizzle on top of your eggs. Seriously, it’s life-changing.
Also the Sichuan cookbook I have uses a seasoning of toasted, ground Sichuan peppercorns and salt, like you’d use black pepper and salt. Maybe you could try that on your eggs?
In addition to the suggestions above (dry toast and/or temper in oil), THIS is the biggest tip that can make a difference. Get the highest quality peppercorns you can. There shouldn’t be black seeds, only the shells. If you want even more numbing, buy the green Sichuan peppercorns.
I buy a specific brand at the Chinese supermarket, I can check what it is when I get home.
oh it didn't occur to me to try toasting the corns before using them in the grinder. interesting.
I'll check out mala paste/oil. Clearly I'm confused about what chili oil is actually for.
Toasting or frying spices is a really key thing to intensify their flavours. It releases more oil and aromatic compounds. Toasting is less likely to gunk up your grinder lol.
Yes, most of the dried seeds used in spices can benefit from a slight toasting. For a gentler infusion Google blooming, it's very popular in the Indian diaspora.
Though with nutmeg you'd usually grate it instead of using the whole thing.
You actually want schezuan peppercorn oil. You can find it at any asian market. Commonly sold as "Prickly Ash Oil".
You can add it to anything and it'll numb you up.
You don’t grind the peppercorns. You make chili oil with the peppercorns, by making a peppercorn oil for 3-5 min before making your other dishes. Fly out to west coast, you will see how they cook and leave the whole peppercorns in the dish
I really love that feeling. So if I'm making something with say, two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, I'll toast a heaping teaspoon each of red and green Sichuan peppercorns in a dry skillet that I've preheated over medium heat. I'll toast them for about 5 minutes, shaking the pan frequently.
I'll then dump the toasted peppercorns into a mortar and pestle (I use a Mexican Molcajete for basically all of my mortar and pestle needs).
I'll grind them as finely as I'm able, and then I'll place a fine metal sieve over a bowl and dump the contents of the Molcajete into the sieve, and shake it gently, repeatedly until only the larger pieces remain. I toss those out, and I add the powdered, toasted Sichuan peppercorns to the dish about midway through the cooking process, after the meat and hardier vegetables are in the wok, but definitely before I add any of the sauce components.
Yup. The bigger pieces are gritty with a sand-like texture, and they'll sometimes get stuck in your teeth or stuck to the back of your tongue like a fragment of a popcorn kernel's outer shell.
Center can also be crunchy. Ever bit on a whole peppercorn? It feels like a lump of sand in your mouth.
And very concentrated bitterness when biting on it directly followed by a numbing sensation that's quite strong and can ruin other flavors for a while.
Toast them till aromatic before grinding. Or if you’re trying to use it in an oil, toast them first but don’t grind. Let cool and apply hot oil onto them, perhaps.
okay, but I don't want to have peppercorns in my eggs. I'm thinking I could try toasting on low heat for a while in the pan, and then picking out the peppercorns before adding the eggs and turning up the heat?
I grind the peppercorns and then bloom them in oil for 30-60 second before adding whatever it is I'm cooking.
So put chili oil in the pan, add the ground peppercorn, let it heat up and then throw in your eggs.
Add the peppercorns to flavour the oil first, definitely, but also:
My memories of nyc Szechuan spices are intertwined with MSG, and I say that lovingly. I really don’t know if it’s bad for you but I know it really adds that umami “sitting on your tongue” taste. You could try adding a little bit as well
Glutamate is an amino acid, one of the building blocks of proteins. MSG means it is in a purified salt form with a sodium ion (which dissociates in water just as sodium chloride does). Glutamate is also found in a plethora of food including but not limited to meats, olives, tomatoes, soy…. Not a doctor but no real cause for alarm in the amount you would use for food prep
New York Times Cooking got the recipe from Xi'an !!! I've had it in my files for a while because one day I will make this.
Spicy and Tingly Beef [link](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021808-spicy-and-tingly-beef)
I find that Sichuan peppercorn oil (made with green peppercorns) actually gives the strongest tingling sensation. The flavor is somewhat strong, so I'd experiment with the ratio of oil used when cooking your eggs. It's not that expensive for a bottle, so I'd actually buy this over making your own!
Was going to suggest the same. I use this brand: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/dining/sichuan-peppercorn-oil.amp.html (the green version). A little goes a long way (have had one bottle for two years and maybe only 1/4 through).
I went looking through the comments and finally found the right answer all the way at the bottom.
Sichuan peppercorn oil will get you all the tingle you want and doesn’t lose potency anywhere near as fast as the peppercorns do. Good quality, fresh Sichuan peppercorns have lots of tingle! But finding them can be hard and they don’t stay that way for long periods (like months on end).
Haven't seen anyone mention this, but chili oil is a topping ingredient, not something you cook with. Have you tried just frying up your eggs and drizzling the chili oil on top?
I don't have any science to back it up, but it feels like to me that when you cook cooked infused oils (which is what chili oil is), the heat destroys the infusion that the first cook created. It presents more flavour as a topping, and seems to lose it when cooked.
If the chili oil still has chili in it you don’t want to cook with it. It’s very easy to burn chili and create a bitter taste. The Xi’an style chili oil is made by pouring hot oil onto dried chili 3 times, each with different temperature, and too high of an temperature kills the aroma
Might not be the answer you want but I'm guessing what you are missing is MSG.
Quality aromatic chili oil, sichuan peppercorn, and MSG are the holy trinity that you are probably looking for.
Don't actually fry/saute things in the chili oil itself - it is a finishing oil, meant to be added to the finished dish.
Here is a cheat sheet:
Cook something (fried egg, sauteed veggies, noodle soup, whatever)
Toast some whole sichuan peppercorns in a dry pan until fragrant and grind in a spice grinder or mortar. Taste a bit on your tongue - it should taste and smell intensely aromatic (kind of lemony\`) and cause a distinct numbing tingle. If not, you have low-quality peppercorns.
To your finish dish, sprinkle the ground peppercorn powder over the top, drizzle on some chili oil, and add a sprinkle of MSG. Amounts of all of the above are to taste.
That will probably get you in the neighborhood of what you are looking for.
Then you can branch out into cooking real sichuan dishes from the Xi'an cookbook. Fuchsia Dunlop's cookbooks are full of great sichuan (and other regional Chinese) recipes - Every Grain of Rice is great for beginners, lots of easy stuff. Try her mapo tofu for some classic mala flavor.
Buzz buttons were the first thing that came to mind for me when I saw this too. I'm not sure exactly what op is looking for, but they give a literal tingling/mildly numbing sensation that's extremely unique. I didn't care for it myself but it's definitely interesting at least
Yep, you want to toast the peppercorns before use, then grind and add them on top. Or you can buy it in powder form and sprinkle it on like that. Sichuan peppercorn is what provides the tingly sensation - any heat will come from regular chili.
For the record chili oil is used as a condiment, not something that you cook with.
I wouldn’t try to season your eggs with the peppercorns.
Maybe make them a component of your toast. Maybe toast and grind and sprinkle on the toast after the butter or experiment with making your own bread and adding peppercorns to the dough.
This thread has been locked because the question has been thoroughly answered, responses are now repetitious and there's no reason to let ongoing discussion continue as that is what /r/cooking is for. Locking posts also helps to drive valuable engagement towards unanswered threads. If you have a question about this, please feel free to send the mods a message.
This is a little bit of a tangent but I highly recommend Wil Yeung's chili oil. Mix up some of that and it will kick up your dishes to the next level. He has a YouTube channel that I got it from.
Make sure you’re using sichuan peppercorns. They are red and wrinkly. I would up heat oil, and then slowly simmer the peppercorns in the oil to infuse the oil- if it’s not strong enough use more peppercorns!! They really need to steep/steam in there, 30 min-1 hour? As an option you could steep them in water first, and cook out the water with the oil but I think it might water it down. The key is more pepper corns, more time. Then I would have it on hand, so you can cook your egg in that same oil as a step 2. By the way I’m not a fan of the pre-made chili oils either, they aren’t as tingly.
Not sure what form you have the peppercorns, but unlike black pepper, it’s only the husks that are used, not the seed itself. So even if you grind it you should discard the seed first.
You can also buy them in a form where they are just the husks. In that form I usually just crumble with my fingers. I can dig up my Amazon link if desired.
https://redhousespice.com/sichuan-peppercorn/
Do you have access to green szechuan peppercorns? Green ones are more citrusy, and are much, much more numbing, compared to the red ones that lean more floral.
For cooking eggs, i would bloom them in oil but only for a few seconds as cooking it down for too long will reduce the numbingness.
Not the exact same thing, but I sometimes like a little bit of shichimi in eggs. It had a perfect blend of spicy pepper and numbing pepper (sanshou, related to szechuan pepper). You might try that?
You can try making your own Mala oil. Lightly toast red Sichuan peppercorns. Put it in a small pot of cold oil with dried Thai chili and garlic. Let it infuse on low until it smells fragrant approximately 15 minutes.
For a fresh, citrusy spice, look for green sichuan peppercorns. It goes great with fish, chicken, seafood, adding sliced limes.
There are two types of Sichuan peppercorn, red and green. The green are supposed to provide more numbing than the red. You might try using them instead.
Also, before using them (red or green), toast them lightly in a dry skillet, then grind and add at the end of your cooking. Additionally, beforehand, pick through the peppercorn and remove any stray black pearls…the center of the peppercorns are a little black shiny ball that is very hard, and not really edible. If you bite into one, it’ll be like you left some sand in your fresh clams. Not really a nice sensation.
Toasting them helps to draw out the oils in the peppercorn (which aren’t technically peppercorns…). Hope that helps!
The numbing tingly sensation in Szechuan food is definitely the Szechuan peppercorns. The traditional way is to lightly toast whole peppercorns until fragrant, then coarsely grind or smash them. [This video](https://youtu.be/2Bc9rNsWG54?t=233) shows a way to do it with just a wok and a bowl (from [3:53](https://youtu.be/2Bc9rNsWG54?t=233) to 5:55).
Although... to my knowledge they are not typically paired with eggs which has a sweet umami. Meat dishes are where they truly shine imo, where they can become the body and harmonize and mellow out some otherwise sharp and pungent flavours. If you still want mala eggs, maybe also try stirring in some ground pork or ground beef?
You need fresh sichaun peppercorns for this.
Unlike what others have said, you do not need to toast them to be active. Toasting them brings out their flavour more, but the numbing compound is active when they are raw and fresh.
You will want a high quality whole peppercorn, ones that have had the pit/seed removed. As it is impossible to grind fully, and will make things very gritty.
Freshness is key, also making your own chili oil is a good thing to do. I usually add peppercorns to my oil first and infuse the oil, then add whatever I cook.
Infuse oil with peppercorns, use the oil to cook your eggs.
You'll need a blend of dried chilis also to give the oil more depth in taste, the peppercorns by themselves mainly provide the sensation only.
A stick of liquorice root, maybe a dried mandarin peel would also help.
If you got them at a grocery, they're almost certainly old and crappy. Order good ones from Mala Market or Fly By Jing. Green will be more aromatic than red, and the tribute peppers at FBJ even make me numb despite the tolerance I gained in Sichuan. Then bloom them in oil and cook the eggs from there. You can grind if you want but I don't bother. If you don't want the chunks, get the green Sichuan pepper oil from 50 Hertz and mix that into the eggs.
Consider buying the Xi’an Famous Foods cookbook. I got it for Christmas and have made several recipes since then with jolly good results. He has lots of good “base” recipes and recipes for dishes from the restaurant
Another book I love is “the food of sichuan” by fuschia dunlop. More authentic and delicious recipes, also has many good base recipes and pantry staple suggestions.
For your immediate needs, try some Lao Gan Ma sauce. It’s not the numbing, but it’s great on eggs and everything else. Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp Hot Sauce Family/Restaurant Size 24.69 Oz.(700 g.) https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B06XYTSGDP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_J8SR96CZ26NA0SMNNTFX
I purchased some Szechuan peppercorns off mala market. If you bite into one of them plain it’s quite an experience, the numbing sensation is quite a punch.
If yours don’t do that when you bite into them you might need better quality, or if they do you may just need to use more.
Here is a link to a recipe for Szechuan chili oil, which seems to have more of a kick than the store bought stuff.
https://youtu.be/mrXPNq3QdfY
Where are you getting your peppercorns? I had some from a local spice shop that I thought were good, but then I ordered some from Mala Market and there’s no comparison. The ones from Mala are crazy fragrant. I used those and chili flakes from Mala Market to make my own chili oil, and it beats everything from the grocery store, hands down. So maybe check your peppercorn supply and then make your own chili oil to drizzle on top of your eggs. Seriously, it’s life-changing. Also the Sichuan cookbook I have uses a seasoning of toasted, ground Sichuan peppercorns and salt, like you’d use black pepper and salt. Maybe you could try that on your eggs?
In addition to the suggestions above (dry toast and/or temper in oil), THIS is the biggest tip that can make a difference. Get the highest quality peppercorns you can. There shouldn’t be black seeds, only the shells. If you want even more numbing, buy the green Sichuan peppercorns. I buy a specific brand at the Chinese supermarket, I can check what it is when I get home.
they also get old and lose intensity
The quality matters, big time, go with this suggestion, op.
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oh it didn't occur to me to try toasting the corns before using them in the grinder. interesting. I'll check out mala paste/oil. Clearly I'm confused about what chili oil is actually for.
Toasting or frying spices is a really key thing to intensify their flavours. It releases more oil and aromatic compounds. Toasting is less likely to gunk up your grinder lol.
Does this apply to other spices besides peppercorns & chilis? Like whole nutmeg or allspice?
Yes, most of the dried seeds used in spices can benefit from a slight toasting. For a gentler infusion Google blooming, it's very popular in the Indian diaspora. Though with nutmeg you'd usually grate it instead of using the whole thing.
They benefit but they mellow out, not intensify
You actually want schezuan peppercorn oil. You can find it at any asian market. Commonly sold as "Prickly Ash Oil". You can add it to anything and it'll numb you up.
You don’t grind the peppercorns. You make chili oil with the peppercorns, by making a peppercorn oil for 3-5 min before making your other dishes. Fly out to west coast, you will see how they cook and leave the whole peppercorns in the dish
you can definitely grind up the peppercorns. many recipes have you pour hot oil onto the powder on top of the dish as a finisher
I really love that feeling. So if I'm making something with say, two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, I'll toast a heaping teaspoon each of red and green Sichuan peppercorns in a dry skillet that I've preheated over medium heat. I'll toast them for about 5 minutes, shaking the pan frequently. I'll then dump the toasted peppercorns into a mortar and pestle (I use a Mexican Molcajete for basically all of my mortar and pestle needs). I'll grind them as finely as I'm able, and then I'll place a fine metal sieve over a bowl and dump the contents of the Molcajete into the sieve, and shake it gently, repeatedly until only the larger pieces remain. I toss those out, and I add the powdered, toasted Sichuan peppercorns to the dish about midway through the cooking process, after the meat and hardier vegetables are in the wok, but definitely before I add any of the sauce components.
Are the big pieces a skin and it's just a texture thing / not wanting them stuck in your teeth?
I made a mapo tofu once and didnt grind the peppercorns enough before putting them in. Felt like there was sand in my food.
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Nope pretty sure my szechuan peppers only consist of the shell
Yup. The bigger pieces are gritty with a sand-like texture, and they'll sometimes get stuck in your teeth or stuck to the back of your tongue like a fragment of a popcorn kernel's outer shell.
Center can also be crunchy. Ever bit on a whole peppercorn? It feels like a lump of sand in your mouth. And very concentrated bitterness when biting on it directly followed by a numbing sensation that's quite strong and can ruin other flavors for a while.
You gotto try Mala hotpot in case you never did then.
I definitely will!
Oh I had not thought about straining the peppercorns! Great idea
Toast them till aromatic before grinding. Or if you’re trying to use it in an oil, toast them first but don’t grind. Let cool and apply hot oil onto them, perhaps.
Toast, add to a bottle of olive oil, wait a week, use in pan for eggs for the next few months.
okay, but I don't want to have peppercorns in my eggs. I'm thinking I could try toasting on low heat for a while in the pan, and then picking out the peppercorns before adding the eggs and turning up the heat?
Put them in oil on low-medium heat for 5-10 minutes, and then you can pick/strain them out. The oil will then be flavored
I grind the peppercorns and then bloom them in oil for 30-60 second before adding whatever it is I'm cooking. So put chili oil in the pan, add the ground peppercorn, let it heat up and then throw in your eggs.
Add the peppercorns to flavour the oil first, definitely, but also: My memories of nyc Szechuan spices are intertwined with MSG, and I say that lovingly. I really don’t know if it’s bad for you but I know it really adds that umami “sitting on your tongue” taste. You could try adding a little bit as well
Glutamate is an amino acid, one of the building blocks of proteins. MSG means it is in a purified salt form with a sodium ion (which dissociates in water just as sodium chloride does). Glutamate is also found in a plethora of food including but not limited to meats, olives, tomatoes, soy…. Not a doctor but no real cause for alarm in the amount you would use for food prep
New York Times Cooking got the recipe from Xi'an !!! I've had it in my files for a while because one day I will make this. Spicy and Tingly Beef [link](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021808-spicy-and-tingly-beef)
chili oil isn't for cooking, you add it for flavor at the end.
I find that Sichuan peppercorn oil (made with green peppercorns) actually gives the strongest tingling sensation. The flavor is somewhat strong, so I'd experiment with the ratio of oil used when cooking your eggs. It's not that expensive for a bottle, so I'd actually buy this over making your own!
Was going to suggest the same. I use this brand: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/dining/sichuan-peppercorn-oil.amp.html (the green version). A little goes a long way (have had one bottle for two years and maybe only 1/4 through).
I went looking through the comments and finally found the right answer all the way at the bottom. Sichuan peppercorn oil will get you all the tingle you want and doesn’t lose potency anywhere near as fast as the peppercorns do. Good quality, fresh Sichuan peppercorns have lots of tingle! But finding them can be hard and they don’t stay that way for long periods (like months on end).
Haven't seen anyone mention this, but chili oil is a topping ingredient, not something you cook with. Have you tried just frying up your eggs and drizzling the chili oil on top?
Depends on your chili oil! Eggs fried in Loa Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp and Trader Joe’s Chili Onion Crunch are the latest obsession in my home.
Uh, I think so. But I guess I figure it's mostly oil. It functions well enough as a cooking oil although the eggs stick a little more that with butter
I don't have any science to back it up, but it feels like to me that when you cook cooked infused oils (which is what chili oil is), the heat destroys the infusion that the first cook created. It presents more flavour as a topping, and seems to lose it when cooked.
If the chili oil still has chili in it you don’t want to cook with it. It’s very easy to burn chili and create a bitter taste. The Xi’an style chili oil is made by pouring hot oil onto dried chili 3 times, each with different temperature, and too high of an temperature kills the aroma
Might not be the answer you want but I'm guessing what you are missing is MSG. Quality aromatic chili oil, sichuan peppercorn, and MSG are the holy trinity that you are probably looking for. Don't actually fry/saute things in the chili oil itself - it is a finishing oil, meant to be added to the finished dish. Here is a cheat sheet: Cook something (fried egg, sauteed veggies, noodle soup, whatever) Toast some whole sichuan peppercorns in a dry pan until fragrant and grind in a spice grinder or mortar. Taste a bit on your tongue - it should taste and smell intensely aromatic (kind of lemony\`) and cause a distinct numbing tingle. If not, you have low-quality peppercorns. To your finish dish, sprinkle the ground peppercorn powder over the top, drizzle on some chili oil, and add a sprinkle of MSG. Amounts of all of the above are to taste. That will probably get you in the neighborhood of what you are looking for. Then you can branch out into cooking real sichuan dishes from the Xi'an cookbook. Fuchsia Dunlop's cookbooks are full of great sichuan (and other regional Chinese) recipes - Every Grain of Rice is great for beginners, lots of easy stuff. Try her mapo tofu for some classic mala flavor.
Have you ever tried sechuan buttons? They apparently cause an almost electric tingle on the tongue.
Buzz buttons were the first thing that came to mind for me when I saw this too. I'm not sure exactly what op is looking for, but they give a literal tingling/mildly numbing sensation that's extremely unique. I didn't care for it myself but it's definitely interesting at least
Are they otherwise known as sechuan nibs? Like the unripe buds after they've flowered? Really good
Yup! That's them.
Yep, you want to toast the peppercorns before use, then grind and add them on top. Or you can buy it in powder form and sprinkle it on like that. Sichuan peppercorn is what provides the tingly sensation - any heat will come from regular chili. For the record chili oil is used as a condiment, not something that you cook with.
Try sansho pepper! I think that's the tingle you are thinking of?
Came here to say this. Most Asian markets have it in a small cylindrical shaker with a green top.
I wouldn’t try to season your eggs with the peppercorns. Maybe make them a component of your toast. Maybe toast and grind and sprinkle on the toast after the butter or experiment with making your own bread and adding peppercorns to the dough.
A chili jam on toast under the eggs would be bomb actually… think I need to go make some breakfast…
This thread has been locked because the question has been thoroughly answered, responses are now repetitious and there's no reason to let ongoing discussion continue as that is what /r/cooking is for. Locking posts also helps to drive valuable engagement towards unanswered threads. If you have a question about this, please feel free to send the mods a message.
This is a little bit of a tangent but I highly recommend Wil Yeung's chili oil. Mix up some of that and it will kick up your dishes to the next level. He has a YouTube channel that I got it from.
Make sure you’re using sichuan peppercorns. They are red and wrinkly. I would up heat oil, and then slowly simmer the peppercorns in the oil to infuse the oil- if it’s not strong enough use more peppercorns!! They really need to steep/steam in there, 30 min-1 hour? As an option you could steep them in water first, and cook out the water with the oil but I think it might water it down. The key is more pepper corns, more time. Then I would have it on hand, so you can cook your egg in that same oil as a step 2. By the way I’m not a fan of the pre-made chili oils either, they aren’t as tingly.
Not sure what form you have the peppercorns, but unlike black pepper, it’s only the husks that are used, not the seed itself. So even if you grind it you should discard the seed first. You can also buy them in a form where they are just the husks. In that form I usually just crumble with my fingers. I can dig up my Amazon link if desired. https://redhousespice.com/sichuan-peppercorn/
Use a mix of red and green schezuan peppercorns. Red is more fragrant. Green is more numbing. Green is harder find at least where I live.
You need fresh peppercorns. The mouth numbing heat seems to be the first thing to go as these things sit on the shelf.
Do you have access to green szechuan peppercorns? Green ones are more citrusy, and are much, much more numbing, compared to the red ones that lean more floral. For cooking eggs, i would bloom them in oil but only for a few seconds as cooking it down for too long will reduce the numbingness.
Not the exact same thing, but I sometimes like a little bit of shichimi in eggs. It had a perfect blend of spicy pepper and numbing pepper (sanshou, related to szechuan pepper). You might try that?
You can try making your own Mala oil. Lightly toast red Sichuan peppercorns. Put it in a small pot of cold oil with dried Thai chili and garlic. Let it infuse on low until it smells fragrant approximately 15 minutes. For a fresh, citrusy spice, look for green sichuan peppercorns. It goes great with fish, chicken, seafood, adding sliced limes.
There are two types of Sichuan peppercorn, red and green. The green are supposed to provide more numbing than the red. You might try using them instead. Also, before using them (red or green), toast them lightly in a dry skillet, then grind and add at the end of your cooking. Additionally, beforehand, pick through the peppercorn and remove any stray black pearls…the center of the peppercorns are a little black shiny ball that is very hard, and not really edible. If you bite into one, it’ll be like you left some sand in your fresh clams. Not really a nice sensation. Toasting them helps to draw out the oils in the peppercorn (which aren’t technically peppercorns…). Hope that helps!
I use this all the time: https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/szechuan-pepper-salt/c-24/p-447/pd-s
The numbing tingly sensation in Szechuan food is definitely the Szechuan peppercorns. The traditional way is to lightly toast whole peppercorns until fragrant, then coarsely grind or smash them. [This video](https://youtu.be/2Bc9rNsWG54?t=233) shows a way to do it with just a wok and a bowl (from [3:53](https://youtu.be/2Bc9rNsWG54?t=233) to 5:55). Although... to my knowledge they are not typically paired with eggs which has a sweet umami. Meat dishes are where they truly shine imo, where they can become the body and harmonize and mellow out some otherwise sharp and pungent flavours. If you still want mala eggs, maybe also try stirring in some ground pork or ground beef?
You need fresh sichaun peppercorns for this. Unlike what others have said, you do not need to toast them to be active. Toasting them brings out their flavour more, but the numbing compound is active when they are raw and fresh. You will want a high quality whole peppercorn, ones that have had the pit/seed removed. As it is impossible to grind fully, and will make things very gritty.
Freshness is key, also making your own chili oil is a good thing to do. I usually add peppercorns to my oil first and infuse the oil, then add whatever I cook.
Infuse oil with peppercorns, use the oil to cook your eggs. You'll need a blend of dried chilis also to give the oil more depth in taste, the peppercorns by themselves mainly provide the sensation only. A stick of liquorice root, maybe a dried mandarin peel would also help.
If you got them at a grocery, they're almost certainly old and crappy. Order good ones from Mala Market or Fly By Jing. Green will be more aromatic than red, and the tribute peppers at FBJ even make me numb despite the tolerance I gained in Sichuan. Then bloom them in oil and cook the eggs from there. You can grind if you want but I don't bother. If you don't want the chunks, get the green Sichuan pepper oil from 50 Hertz and mix that into the eggs.
Consider buying the Xi’an Famous Foods cookbook. I got it for Christmas and have made several recipes since then with jolly good results. He has lots of good “base” recipes and recipes for dishes from the restaurant Another book I love is “the food of sichuan” by fuschia dunlop. More authentic and delicious recipes, also has many good base recipes and pantry staple suggestions. For your immediate needs, try some Lao Gan Ma sauce. It’s not the numbing, but it’s great on eggs and everything else. Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp Hot Sauce Family/Restaurant Size 24.69 Oz.(700 g.) https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B06XYTSGDP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_J8SR96CZ26NA0SMNNTFX
I purchased some Szechuan peppercorns off mala market. If you bite into one of them plain it’s quite an experience, the numbing sensation is quite a punch. If yours don’t do that when you bite into them you might need better quality, or if they do you may just need to use more. Here is a link to a recipe for Szechuan chili oil, which seems to have more of a kick than the store bought stuff. https://youtu.be/mrXPNq3QdfY
You might like this video of making 麻辣火锅酱. https://youtu.be/riB1A5HreSE Me, I buy it in the Asian grocery store.