Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chilli Crisp condiment. Last modified on Sat world’s best chili Nov 2022 05. Not three feet of flat land, not three days without rain, not a family with three silver coins. Tao Huabi is the woman behind Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chilli Crisp, a hot, crunchy sauce of chopped chillies that are fried to a red so dark it is almost black.

Open it, and you find the formidable combination of the odd peanut, a few crunchy, salty soya beans, MSG, and oil so infused with the chilli that it seems to glow. Lao Gan Ma, iconic in China, is increasingly appearing in cupboards and fridges in the rest of the world. It is so popular in fact that Tao Huabi is worth far more than three silver coins. Born in 1947, the eighth daughter of a poor family in a village of mountainous Guizhou, Tao did not go to school and did not learn to read or write.