The Best Chili Crisp Brand, According To Our Taste Test

Nothing punches up rice, eggs, ramen, dan dan noodles, or really any dish better than chili crisp. No matter what brand you prefer, it's a pungent, spicy, oily, crispy delight. If your favorite brand is Lao Gan Ma, then we'd say you have great taste, because it's also The Takeout's highest-ranked chili crisp.

For us, this Guizhou-produced chili crisp is the perfect combination of sweet, spicy, salty, and boldly flavored. Maybe the great taste is a result of knowing how to use MSG, which is an amazing flavor enhancer and no longer the bad guy! Maybe it's the pieces of chopped peanut and salty soybean mixed in, adding a heartier element to the crisp. Or perhaps each little bit adds up to be more than the sum of its parts. Whatever it is, this "Old Godmother" (which is what Lao Gan Ma translates to in English) should be stocked in your kitchen, as it's ready to add a massive wave of flavor to whatever you're cooking.

Lao Gan Ma is one of China's most popular chili crisp and chili oil products, with exploding sales and growth that continue to increase year after year. In China, part of the reason it is popular is because of the traditional ingredients and flavor profile. Lao Gan Ma is a great example of Guizhou Province's spicy, intense cuisine, which shares a love of chiles and fiery flavors with neighboring Sichuan and Hunan provinces.

What makes Lao Gan Ma emblematic of not just China's cuisine but also the country's growing economy and wave of capitalist entrepreneurship is its owner, Tao Huabi. She grew up very poor in Guizhou, and after losing her husband, she moved to the city of Guiyang. In the early 1990s, she began selling noodles and eventually opened up a small restaurant — her chili oil was what made her dishes so good. 

For advertising, Huabi gave her jars of chili crisp oil to truck drivers for free. By 1996, she had opened a factory. Now she drives a custom Rolls Royce and is known worldwide as the face of chili crisp oil. (Yes, the woman on the jar really is her!) From extreme poverty to an extremely popular multimillion-dollar company, this humble, delicious condiment reflects its owner and China's own history of growth.