For generations, families across Central China's Hunan province have sun-dried green vegetables, chilies, beans, eggplant, fish and meat to extend their shelf life without refrigeration. This process also intensifies their natural flavors, making vegetables taste sweeter and chilies less sharp but more fragrant.
For Zhang Xiaochun, a Hunan cuisine master with 47 years of experience, preserving this flavor has been his lifelong mission.
Hunan natives will often say while eating dried white chili stir-fried with pork: "This has the flavor of the sun in it."
The sun-dried flavor, a key element in Hunan cuisine, refers to the unique taste achieved through traditional preservation methods using sunlight, wind and natural temperatures.
"What's the flavor of the sun? In my memory, it's the flavor of a mother's kitchen," said Zhang, 64, who grew up in a farming family of five children.
He recalled watching his mother bathing vegetables under the sun for days until they were half-dry, then mixing them with salt and packing them into clay jars. These preserved vegetables would last for half a year.
Zhang said meat was scarce on his family's dining table, but these sun-dried vegetables — long-lasting, flavorful and perfect with rice — were an unforgettable taste from his childhood.
"When there was no meat or even oil, my mother would boil a pot of soup with the dried vegetables," Zhang said.
"I could eat two big bowls of rice with just that soup."
Despite having tasted and cooked with a variety of fine ingredients later in life, Zhang always missed the sun-dried foods from home.
"To me, they tasted better than any luxury dish," he said.
These memories have become the foundation of his work.
For the past nine years, Zhang has organized an annual cooking event centered on sun-dried ingredients. Each year, he selects a single ingredient and invites chefs from across China to create two dishes with it.
The goal is to preserve the tradition of Hunan cuisine through open-minded exchanges. For Zhang, the sun-dried flavor is a shared heritage that different culinary traditions across China can interpret in their own ways.
"We also introduce Hunan cooking techniques to chefs from other regions, so they can create new dishes in their own localities," he said.
According to Zhang, sun-dried ingredients can play three roles in a dish. "They can be the main ingredient, making up 70 percent of the dish," he said. "They can serve as a supporting ingredient, like preserved vegetables under braised pork, taking up 30 percent. Or they can be a flavor enhancer — just 10 or 20 grams can elevate an entire stir-fried dish."
Unlike machine-dried ingredients, sun-dried ones have a distinct character. "They are natural, healthy ingredients," Zhang said."No chemicals, no artificial additives."
Modern technology, he insists, cannot replicate the natural drying process. "The sun does not lie, and ingredients do not lie."
Among all sun-dried ingredients, one stands out as the most representative of Hunan cuisine — the white chili. "That is probably the first thing Hunan people think of," Zhang said.
Contrary to popular belief, white chili is not a distinct variety. It is crafted from fresh green chilies that are blanched in boiling water and then laid out under the intense sunlight. "On a hot summer day in Hunan, typically above 35 C, the chilies turn completely white in a single morning," Zhang said.
After that, white chili is available in two forms: moist and dry. The moist version can be frozen as it is, while the dry version requires two or three more days of sunbathing, Zhang said. Once fully dried, the chilies can be stored in a sealed plastic bag at room temperature for months.
Stir-fried with pork, chicken, or fish, white chili offers a crisp, chewy texture and a gentle, sweet heat — less aggressive than fresh chilies but more fragrant, making it one of the favorite ingredients in Hunan kitchens. "These are the dishes many Hunan people grew up with," Zhang said.
Zhang believes that Hunan's sun-dried flavors have a place on the global stage. Some of his former students now run Hunan restaurants abroad, he said, and they have learned to adapt to local tastes.
"But you know what, some foreigners eat much spicier chilies than we do," he said.
In recent years, Zhang and his students have explored innovative approaches to introduce elements of Hunan cuisine to a broader consumer base. They have incorporated the sun-dried flavors into high-end dishes, pairing dried vegetables with sea cucumber and abalone. They have also transformed sun-dried vegetables into sauces, blending them with Western foods."Spread it on bread or make a sandwich. It's delicious," Zhang said. "I love innovation. You have to move with the times."
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