LOCAL FOOD GUIDE

Kaizhou Sichuan Pepper Beef 开州椒麻牛肉

Kaizhou Jiaoma Niurou

Kaizhou Sichuan Pepper Beef is featured among the local specialties of Chongqing.

AI illustration: A plate of thin cooked meat slices with modest green vegetable and pepper strips.
AI illustration · AI 示意图（仅供参考，非实拍）AI-generated visual reference; not a restaurant photograph. AI 示意图，仅供参考，非实拍。

Kaizhou Sichuan Pepper Beef (开州椒麻牛肉) is a beef dish from Kaizhou District (开州区) in Chongqing: selected yellow-cattle beef (黄牛肉), cut into even pieces and coated in a jiaoma sauce (椒麻酱汁), the Sichuan seasoning built on the numbing tingle of Sichuan pepper.

Flavour and texture

A 2026 People's Daily Online report on Kaizhou food, supplied by the district culture and tourism commission, describes the beef as numbing and satisfying, spicy without catching the throat, with several layers of flavour that grow more savoury the longer it is chewed. The sauce is a house recipe (秘制).

Where it comes from

Kaizhou Sichuan Pepper Beef is one of the Kaizhou dishes on Yuwei 360 Bowls (渝味360碗), the Chongqing list of tourism dishes, which took nine dishes from the district. A 2024 Xinhua report from the Kaizhou media centre names jiaoma beef among the district's well-known dishes, alongside Kaizhou sausage (开州香肠), the mixed steamer dish dahunzheng (大混蒸), the tangerine-scented banquet (橘香宴) and the medicinal-food banquet (药膳宴).

China Revealed · Editorially updated 2026-09-23

Sources & reading

Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.