Regional Cuisine Hunan Cuisine

Hunan cuisine shares many commonalities with its close, more well-known cousin, Szechwan cooking, Both cuisines originate in the Western region of China. The climate there is sub-tropical humid and warm enough to encourage the use of fiery spices to help cool the body, and to require high spicing of food as a preservative. With similar climate, the two regions also share many ingredients rice is a major staple in both diets, and chili peppers are an important part of most dishes. The two styles of regional cuisine are similar enough that many restaurants and cookbooks lump them together under Western Chinese cooking or simple refer to both as Szechwan cuisine.

There are some important differences, though. Hunan cooking is, for one thing, even more fiery than most Szechwan dishes. Szechwan dishes often include chili paste for rubbing into meats, or including in sauce. Hunan chefs include the entire dried chili pepper, with its intensely spicy seeds and rind.

The differences in the actual land of the two regions also has an effect on the differences in their cuisine. The Szechwan region is mountainous jungle, with little arable land for farming. The Hunan region,...