Numbing and tingling
Sichuan pepper and its cousins: a buzz on the lips rather than a burn.
Numbing spices create a tingling, buzzing feeling on the lips and tongue. Sichuan pepper is the best known, with timur, sansho and the Indonesian andaliman as relatives.
What makes them numbing
Sichuan pepper and its relatives contain hydroxy-alpha-sanshool, a compound that stimulates touch nerves, giving a tingle like a mild electric buzz. It is not a flavour in the usual sense but a sensation.
How cooks use them
In Sichuan cooking, ma, the numbing, is paired with la, the heat of chilli, in mapo tofu and hot pot. Japanese cooks use sansho with grilled eel, Nepali cooks use timur in pickles, and Batak cooks in Indonesia use andaliman.
Tips
Toast and grind the husks only, removing seeds and thorns, as the seeds are gritty. The sensation fades after a few minutes.
Numbing and tingling on EveryMasala
The spices written up so far, best known first.
馃嚠馃嚦 India and 3 moreIndian prickly ash
A pungent fruit from a thorny shrub, used for its tingling spice in coastal India and Vietnam.Fruit 路 Sharp and pungent 路 Numbing and tingling
馃嚭馃嚫 United States and 1 moreCommon prickly ash
An aromatic North American tree whose bark and berries give a sharp, numbing biteBark 路 Bitter 路 Numbing and tingling
馃嚚馃嚦 China and 5 moreSichuan pepper鑺辨 (hu膩ji膩o)
The dried husk of Zanthoxylum fruit, prized for its citrus scent and electric numbness.Fruit 路 Citrus and bright 路 Sharp and pungent
馃嚠馃嚛 Indonesia and 5 moreAndaliman
A citrus-scented, tongue-numbing seed husk related to Sichuan pepperFruit 路 Numbing and tingling 路 Citrus and bright
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Sichuan pepper: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Indian prickly ash: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Andaliman: Daderot, Public domain, source
- Common prickly ash: A. Barra, CC BY-SA 4.0, source