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This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to what people in the food industry are obsessed with eating, drinking, and buying right now.
Not every dish turns out as well as one hopes. Sometimes the space between the complex stew you had aspired to and the underwhelming meal that’s in your bowl is a hairline fracture, fixable with a pinch of salt. Other times it’s a grand canyon full of missed opportunities, bad execution, and lack of inspiration. Whether my food needs a little help or a lot, I reach for Fly by Jing’s Zhong sauce. It fills all those gaps and more, making just-okay dishes taste great and great dishes taste amazing.
Inspired by the spicy-sweet Zhong dumplings beloved in Chengdu, Fly By Jing’s sauce is an all-purpose finishing condiment, one with a baseline of chili oil but a massive range of savory flavors beyond pure peppery heat. The chili oil is fortified with an umami-packed blend of soy sauce, mushroom powder, and toasted sesame oil. Underneath all those savory elements is a steady pulse of caramelly sweetness, a counterweight to salty soy and piquant chiles.
That balance is the key to Zhong sauce’s phenomenal versatility. Unlike some chili-based condiments, which simply dial up spiciness, this one is a firehose of flavor that meshes remarkably well with all kinds of dishes. I like to drape it on soft-scrambled eggs before rolling them into breakfast burritos and spread lines of it on grilled sausages alongside yellow mustard and pickle relish. I have put it on everything from nachos to dal to sandwiches, and in each case Zhong stepped in like culinary putty to pull it all together.
I may be Bon Appétit’s food director, but much like a cobbler with no shoes or a plumber with leaky pipes, my weeknight meals are a desperate scramble to put food on the table for four people with wildly different preferences. Corners are cut and shortcuts are taken in service of getting everyone at least a bit of something they will like; you will rarely catch me posting anything I have made on a weeknight on Instagram. Even professionals need help sometimes. Thankfully there’s Zhong sauce.