W hen the weather gets colder, many may find it important to have ways to warm up in the Lowcountry. Charleston chefs often do the hard work of keeping our mouths hot and our bellies full.
Using a variety of peppers and chilis, chefs add heat to their dishes with intention — and not just to make a dish hot. When using ingredients like peppers or chilis, it allows them to play with the food and try out different flavor and spice combinations.
“It lets you taste food,” said Bintou N’Daw of Bintu Atelier, about habaneros (her favorite pepper). “It’s not completely aggressive and it just warms you up, like giving you a big hug.”
Balance is key
What sets a good meal apart from a great one is balance. When the five flavor profiles — sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami — are in harmony within a dish, your mouth may find heaven.
“As a chef, we have to keep in mind three things,” said Graham Calabria, executive chef of Coterie. “Our bodies are primordially designed for fat, salt, and sugar. That’s what we seek out in nature.”
Chefs play with heat to not only add another depth of flavor, but to help balance a dish.
“By adding spice or heat in a dish, they add depth, balance and sensation,” said Set Sison of Bok Choy Boy. “When used right, they can elevate a dish from good to unforgettable.“
Sison added that he likes to add gochujang — a Korean chili paste — for flavor and taste, which is used in many of his dishes and specials (keep an eye on their Instagram, folks). Other ingredients like jalapeño peppers, sambal and bird’s eye chilis are used in dishes like the pork belly noods, banh mi sandwich and in the spicy sauces for its Dan Daniel noodles.
“They’re all mild to medium spice, but add flavor and depth to a dish,” Sison said.
Fatty dishes can also use a little heat for some balance, he added, to cut through the richness. In dishes like the Dan Daniel noodles, which uses a spicy peanut sauce, the heat helps cut through the fatty, chewy noodles while also adding to the overall flavor: sweet, salty and spicy.
Jacob Ritua of XO Brasserie shares the sentiment with Sison and utilizes peppers in many forms to achieve a sense of balance.
“When we’re looking for a balance, usually we look for things other than just the pepper in its raw form whether it’s cooking it out or pickling,” said Ritua.
In XO’s burrata, he usespickled serrano peppers not only to add a little bit of heat, but to give some acidity to balance the richness of the dish.
Calabria achieves the same level of balance at Coterie with the housemade ceviche.
“When testing our ceviche, there was one point where I decided it needed a little bit of brightness in the dish,” he said. “And one thing that can enhance that citrus note is going to be some jalapeno.”
While the jalapeño is raw, Calabria uses other peppers like guajillo and morita to add flavors to the chips served alongside the dish. “There’s not a lot of heat in the guajillo or morita,” he said. “It adds a smoky element to the ceviche that really balances that dish out.”
At Bintu Atelier, N’Daw uses habaneros in all of her dishes for its flavor profile and spice level.
“I do not have one dish without it,” she said. “Even the mildest things you will see on my menu will always have habanero, but you won’t feel a lot of heat.”
Despite the name, the shito spicy crab fried rice isn’t going to be incredibly spicy, she added. In the dish, habaneros are used in the sauce for its mild heat and strong flavor to balance the sweetness of the crab. But, if you want it hotter, N’Daw has a special housemade hot sauce to turn up the heat.
Spicy or not spicy?
Balance isn’t always easy. It’s a constant process of trial and error. Sometimes a dish can be the right amount of spice for a chef, but when it hits the table, it may be too spicy for a customer.
“It’s hard to toe the line because a lot of our consumers aren’t going to have the spice palate that I have,” Calabria said. “When I’m trying to build that balance in the dish, I’ll test it amongst our front of the house staff and our back of the house staff to kind of see if it’s too hot or not and if I need to dial it back from there.”
It’s a common obstacle among chefs, as Ritua follows the same process when making new dishes at XO Brasserie. Heooks for his palette, then adjusts based on staff and customer feedback.
“It’s really always just tasting every step all the way through the entire dish and then tweaking it if people are saying it’s too spicy or not spicy enough,” he said.
Because everyone’s heat tolerance is different, N’Daw said. She added “spicy” to the name of the crab fried rice to give warning to those with a low tolerance. To her, the dish isn’t very hot, but other consumers beg to differ.
“When people see ‘spicy,’ they ask, ‘can we have this less spicy?’ ” she said. “But it’s like you don’t know how spicy it is.We’ll have some people say it’s not spicy, but then other people will be sweating, so that’s why I call it spicy.”
Sometimes, though, a spicy dish can just be a spicy dish.
“You always have to make sure that the consumer knows what they are going to get,” said Calabria. “If we want to make a spicy dish, then we need to tell the consumer it’s spicy.”
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