Ping Coombes - The MasterChef Champion Making World-Class Chilli Oil in Somerset

There's a jar on a kitchen worktop in Church Farm, Somerset. It has a traditional Malaysian batik design on the label and contains 190ml of dark, amber-flecked oil. Open it, and something quietly extraordinary happens. The smell alone - toasted peanuts, shallots, a warm hum of chilli, tells you that whoever made this was thinking about flavour the way only someone truly obsessed with food can.

That person is Ping Coombes. And if you haven't come across her yet, allow us to introduce you.

From Ipoh to MasterChef - and Back to the Kitchen

Ping grew up in Ipoh, a city in northern Malaysia. As a child she was, by her own admission, shooed out of the kitchen by her mother - a protective cook who kept her recipes close. Ping watched, absorbed, and memorised.

When she moved to the UK in 2000 to study at Oxford, she discovered something she hadn't expected: she missed the food so much it drove her to learn how to cook it herself. She started experimenting, calling home to ask her mother how to replicate dishes from memory, failing repeatedly, and trying again. That persistence - combined with a natural instinct for bold, balanced flavour, would eventually take her somewhere remarkable.

In 2014, Ping entered MasterChef. She won.

Not just the series. In 2022, she returned to win MasterChef Champion of Champions - the title that puts her, in the language of the competition, in a category all of her own. Her winning menus drew on the food she grew up eating: nasi lemak, laksa, satays, sambals - dishes that are intensely layered, each component deliberately chosen. She has since written her debut cookbook, Malaysia: Recipes from a Family Kitchen, along with her recently published follow up book, Rice. She has become Malaysia Kitchen Ambassador, runs supper clubs and a cookery school here at Church Farm.

All of which raises an obvious question: with all that, why is she making chilli oil?

Why Chilli Oil? Why Somerset?

Ping has always cooked with chilli oil. In Malaysian cuisine, a good sambal or chilli condiment isn't an afterthought - it's architecture. It's what ties a dish together, adds the heat that makes everything else make sense, and brings the kind of depth that takes something ordinary and makes it something you think about the next day.

When she came to make her own, she didn't try to recreate a Chinese crispy chilli oil or a Japanese rayu. She made something rooted in her own palate - Malaysian in spirit, but using the finest ingredients she could find locally. The base oil is a product made by our shared landlord at Church Farm - Fussels Fine Foods, a Somerset producer whose cold-pressed rapeseed oil has a clean taste that carries the other flavours beautifully.

She makes it in small batches from her kitchen at Church Farm. That's not marketing language - it's just true. Each jar is the product of someone who knows exactly what she wants it to taste like, and won't compromise to produce it faster or cheaper.

The result won a **2025 Great Taste Award gold star** - the food industry's most respected blind-tasted accolade.

The Two Oils - And What Makes Each One Different

Peanut & Shallot Chilli Oil

This is the one that tends to convert people who think they don't particularly like chilli oil.

It's made with crushed chillies, crunchy peanuts, shallots, garlic, and Fussels extra virgin rapeseed oil. The heat is present but not the point - what leads is the savoury, almost nutty richness of the shallots and peanuts together, with the chilli warming from the back. It's deeply moreish in a way that's hard to explain until you've tried it on a fried egg at 8am and realised you've been using the wrong breakfast condiment for years.

It's also, notably, a very different animal from the Chinese-style crispy chilli oils that dominate the category. Where Lao Gan Ma (which we also love) leans into umami and fermented depth, Ping's oil is lighter, nuttier, more textural. They sit happily side by side in a kitchen - and they don't do the same job.

Shop Ping Coombes Peanut & Shallot Chilli Oil →

Smoked Szechuan Chilli Oil

Ping's second oil goes somewhere quite different. Szechuan peppercorns do something no other spice quite does - they don't just add heat, they create a tingling, numbing sensation that makes your whole mouth feel awake. Combined with smoked rapeseed oil and crushed chillies, this is the more assertive of the two: still balanced, still thoughtful, but with considerably more edge.

If the Peanut & Shallot is a weeknight staple, the Szechuan is what you reach for when a dish needs a jolt. Noodles, dumplings, roasted cauliflower, cold sesame chicken - anything that benefits from that signature lip-tingling warmth.

Shop Ping Coombes Smoked Szechuan Chilli Oil →

Five Ways to Use Ping's Chilli Oil

You already know about noodles and dumplings. Here's where else it belongs:

1. On eggs - any style

Scrambled, fried, soft-boiled, poached. A generous spoonful of the Peanut & Shallot oil over a just-cooked egg is one of the most satisfying things you can eat for under £1. The heat warms through the yolk; the peanuts add crunch where there wasn't any.

2. Stirred into plain rice

This is how Ping herself describes using it - and once you've tried it, you'll understand. Plain jasmine rice with a spoonful of chilli oil and a pinch of salt is a completely legitimate meal. It's what the oil was designed to do.

3. As a finishing drizzle on soups and broths

A few drops into a miso soup, a ramen, a simple vegetable broth - the oil blooms across the surface and changes the whole register of the dish. Try it on our [Vegan Spicy Peanut Butter Ramen](https://somersetfoodie.com/blogs/recipes/vegetarian-spicy-peanut-butter-ramen) for a version Ping herself had a hand in creating.

4. Through a salad dressing

A teaspoon of the Szechuan oil whisked with soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a little sesame - that's a dressing that will make even a very simple salad feel considered. It's particularly good on a cold noodle salad or shredded cucumber.

5. On avocado toast, dips, and cheese

One of our customers puts it on a baked Camembert. We are not here to argue with that. The richness of good cheese and the heat and crunch of the oil are, it turns out, an excellent combination.

Why We Stock It

We're fortunate at Somerset Foodie to know Ping personally. She's a friend, neighbour and fellow foodie. She sources ingredients from us, we cook together, run cooking demos together and laugh together....a lot!

We stock very few products made by named individuals. Ping's oils are among them because they're the real thing: made in small batches, tasted and adjusted by someone with an exceptional palate, using a base oil from a producer we've worked with for years. The 2025 Great Taste gold star was welcome recognition. But honestly, we'd have stocked them anyway.

If you haven't tried them yet, the Peanut & Shallot is the place to start. We think you'll find a use for it every single day.

Browse Ping Coombes' full range in our Chilli Oil Collection

*Want to explore more of our best chilli oils from around the world? Read our Ultimate Guide to Crispy Chilli Oil in the Flavour Files.*