Seafood Made Simple: My chilli oil recipe is perfect for salads, rice and these steamed mussels

Spice it up with your own chilli oil

Mussels shaoxing and chilli oil. Picture: Chani Anderson

Fermented hot sauces, crispy chilli oils and hot honeys have become staple condiments within the Irish pantry. The emergence of Lao Gan Ma into the European market was the catalyst for this demand of chilli flavoured oils.

I came across Lao Gan Ma for the first time in 2019, during lockdown, having a little more time on my hands to browse the shelves in the Asian supermarket. It’s the original crispy chilli oil, utterly addictive with crunchy fried chillies and MSG.