Lao Gan Ma: The History Of The World's Most Famous Chilli Sauce

They call her the spiciest godmother in China, certainly not by chance. Her spicy oil is found in pantries around the world and is one of the most popular condiments, not only by those who use it in Asian cuisine, but also by chefs and amateur cooks. The lady of spicy food, Tao Huabi, however, has a story behind her that, before arriving under the twinkling lights of supermarkets, starts from a mountainous village in Guizhou, a region in southwestern China. A story that tells the value of authentic flavours and, above all, how much our eating habits have changed.

It is estimated that the value of her fortune is around 1.7 billion dollars, but Tao Huabi was born into a very poor family. The youngest of eight siblings, she did not attend school and did not learn to read or write. According to the biography published on the What's On Weibo website, she spent a particularly difficult childhood and, under the pangs of hunger, she survived the Great Chinese Famine by eating plant roots. Once an adult and widowed, she moved to the city of Guiyang, where she began selling noodles accompanied by a hot sauce prepared by herself. At the end of the '90s, a restaurant opened with a simple but evocative name, the Economic Restaurant, which benefited from the opening of a new highway nearby and the arrival of a new flow of customers, including truckers to whom she gave jars of sauce. Within a few years, the word spread and more and more people started to visit Tao Huabi, attracted above all by the possibility of taking her sauce home rather than by the dishes served.

It is at this point that the woman understood the potential of her prescription. In 1996, a factory opened inside a house in Guiyang, and just a year later, the Lao Gan Ma Special Flavour Foodstuffs Company was founded. Huabi is not only the chief operating officer, but she also became the company's unofficial mascot, with her face printed on glass jars. Hence, also the name of the brand: Lao Gan Ma means 'old godmother', because the idea is to enclose in a jar the taste of a product as good as the homemade one, as if it had just been prepared by an old lady.

Today, Lao Gan Ma produces twelve different products, including pickled cabbage, chilli tofu and hot pot preparations, but the star product remains the chilli sauce based on chilli, soy, oil and other spices.

How Do You Explain The Popularity In Western Markets?

Miranda Brown, professor of Chinese studies at the University of Michigan and historian of Chinese cuisine, explained in a 2021 interview with NBC that the craze for chilli sauces that we have been witnessing in recent years is largely due to the growing interest in Sichuan flavours, even outside of China: “Spices have become fashionable only in the last generation - said Brown, citing the case of Lao Gan Ma - There is a rediscovery, in China, of its regional cuisines, which then spread abroad.”

To understand the variety of spicy foods present in China, it should be remembered that in the Sichuan region, spicy is part of a highly codified cuisine, refined over the centuries and almost 'scientific', in which there is a real grammar of flavours. Here, chilli and Sichuan pepper talk to create precise sensory effects, such as mala, a spice that does not burn like chilli, but causes a tingling sensation and slight numbness on the tongue.

Alongside the popularity of Sichuan flavours, and thanks to it, other types of spicy food have also begun to be explored, some with a more rural character and that today we would define as almost homemade, such as that of Lao Gan Ma. Combinations that we can only define as special and that, driven by the popularity of social networks and the work of food creators, from informal restaurants to the most renowned ones, have given the final push to spicy oil. This is also why today we find it on a cup of vanilla ice cream, in a watermelon and burrata salad or added to stringy cheese toast.

Read the original article in ELLE Italy.