Rather than a particular dish, what's your favourite food ingredient?

No mention of garlic?

Any of the spices in five spice powder, or said powder.

Soy sauce.

Tomatoes.

Garlic 100%.

Always have garlic powder and 3-6 heads of garlic in my kitchen and I am not above roasting a couple of them heads at a moments notice so I can toss roasted garlic into anything.

My wife hates me lol
- Garlic is the only answer for me. I double the garlic quantity in any recipe that calls for it. It's just so good
- There's always freshly minced garlic. In fact for a lot of recipes that call for garlic slices I usually turn that into minced garlic.
  
  Luckily for me, wife is even more into garlic. She doubles the quantity in a recipe. XD
Garlic and onions. Any onions is good onions.
- I like every month or two buying a pound of onions, run em over the mandolin and spend an afternoon doing a nice slow caramelize on em. Reduce em down to a cup or so of dark brown amazingness, toss it in the fridge and add into a bunch of food just like I do roasted garlic.
- I've been going for garlic and shallots lately.
  In my fridge, there's nearly always a container with garlic butter and olive oil that I make, and another with chopped shallots with salt and pepper, soaking in olive oil.
I'm not sure how much smell is factored into people's enjoyment of garlic, but my nose basically doesn't work (and not because of covid), maybe that's why. It's a nice to have but not that high for me. Disclaimer though, I am Asian. It's just my preference. For example, while garilic is really nice on fried food, I'd rather have them with salted egg sauce, pepper sauce, various spicy condiment etc. There are so many things to add for flavouring and I'm not particularly picky. I do know someone who's a garlic fiend though.

As for eggs, there are so many dishes here with eggs or eggs as a topping, you could have eggs in all your meal for a day and it wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. Like, in a lot of western cultures it's probably normal to have fried eggs on their own in the morning or something. Here it's very easy to just put fried egg or crispy omelette on rice and it won't be strange. Not to mention you can put them in noodles, soup and so on.
- I'm Asian too, garlic is also common in Chinese dishes.

Hot peppers. Whether it's jalapeno, cayenne, habanero, Thai chilis, ghost pepper, or even the milder ones like banana peppers, they're all great. :D

Garlic and cilantro (or Kulantro … if your a genetic freak…) come before peppers for me.

But peppers find their way in most my cooking. I use vodka or gin (or any neutral-ish booze) to soak the peppers and extract the capsaicin. this gives you better control of the capsaicin content relative to everything else (including all the amazing flavors in the peppers themselves.)

Also makes for a moment of hilarity when your brother’s in laws are over and decide to raid your liquor cabinet for a vesper. (Which… even Ian Fleming thought was god awful)
- Cilantro is interesting because to me it doesn't really taste like anything, but in a dish where I'm used to seeing it on top it just feels so wrong when it's not there.

Smoked paprika

One of the most overlooked imo as the taste is subtle. But adding it gives such a homely warm feel to a dish.

How has no one said potatoes, or rice yet? They are both so incredibly versatile.

Personally, it’s potato. A large amount of cuisines use them and in wildly different ways sometimes.

For baking, cinnamon.

For meals, I find the key to good vegetarian food is tomatoes.

Preserved lemon. It's pickled, fermented lemon. Discovered it in Moroccan dishes, and it is heavenly.

Fuck yeah.

Noodles, especially spaghetti.
Eggplants, especially grilled.
Cheese, especially aged or blue mold cheeses.

Butter

plus one for eggs.

Worcestershire sauce

Ground black pepper

love

@Niello Garlic without question, then tomato.

These days it’s probably turmeric, even though that isn’t very exciting. I’m having trouble thinking of a dish I wouldn’t put it in under any circumstances.

Really hard, but possibly paprika or maybe garlic?

Butternut squash and spinach are also popular.

Any cheese. Stilton, feta or Stinky Bishop.

There are so many things I could say, but if I'm being totally honest, white rice. I could eat it plain, with butter, with so many different sauces, under other food, mixed into other food, at any meal, as a snack, even multiple times a day. I never get tired of it.

Well, I love butter, y'all.

I clicked this hoping it would feature a specific person and I was not disappointed.
- Keeps ya skee-yun muh-wee-ist.

I really like legumes. Pinto beans 🤤

Sriracha. I put it on pretty much anything

look at Mr Moneybags over here able to afford Sriracha

It's a tie between garlic, basil, lemon, rice and pork.

Meat, specifically beef.

Lately, deep fried capers.

Chives and smoked parprika❗

I could probably put chilly powder on anything but my wife would hate me.

Cardamon is highly underrated

Artichoke similarly underrated

Sun dried tomatoes ... everyone knows this is S tier

Salt. I love a lot of foods, but you gotta have the right amount of salt on all of em

@Niello No truffle? Really? I guess that leaves ALL the truffle for me!

Favorite in terms of "food with X in it," or favorite in terms of adding it? Because if it's the first one, it turns out I love me some damn onions something fierce. If it's just "which ingredient do you enjoy adding," eggs every time. So satisfying.

Any kind of pork, beef, or lamb fat. Using it as a replacement for butter or oils to cook or prepare ingredients brings a whole new depth of flavor to a dish!