I bought some from “Spice of Life Peppercorns.” It seems awfully mild.
Does it need to be roasted or something?
I just got some, and not knowing anything I just read up on the internet.
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The majority internet advice to discard the round black seed and use only the hulls was (in my experience) unnecessary. I did use more hulls than seeds.
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I lightly toasted them all in a frying pan and then crushed them with a pestle in a mortar (well, okay, with a soy sauce bottle in a small bowl).
My peanut-less Kung Pao Shrimp was great, and nobody died, so it must have worked out okay.
Holy cow!
I mean, thanks, the flavor is vastly improved.
Sichuan peppercorns are not supposed to be crazy spicy. That’s what the heaps and heaps of red peppers are for. They are supposed to impart a strange numbing feeling to the dish- made properly, you should feel like your mouth is slobbering, numb, and buzzing. It’s a strange experience.
Yes, that’s what I was looking for.
And I presume that “pepper” is a translation error, since they are the fruit of the ash tree. 
Hmmmm . . . I wonder how this stuff would do in chili? (As a supplement to the chili peppers, of course, not as a substitute.)
Yeah, I wouldn’t call them spicy at all. One of the important flavor principles of Sichuan cuisine is ma la, “numb and spicy.” The numb, as you note, comes from the Sichuan peppercorns. The spicy comes from the chili peppers. They complement each other.
I was just about to go into my anecdote about my first time eating the peppercorns, only to note that a nearly identical exchange happened almost two years ago, so I’ll point the curious to that thread for more info on this spice.
Success! I have achieved numbness! I made Szechuan Chicken again with some unknown skinny red peppers from the local Farmer’s Market.
I roasted the Szechuan in a pan until they smoked, ground them to powder and added about a teaspoon to an eight inch skillet with chicken breast meat and various vegetables, garlic and ginger.
This is good stuff.
Did you grind them with the seeds, or husks only? Wikipedia sez, “Only the husks are used; the shiny black seeds are discarded or ignored as they have a very gritty sand-like texture.”
I ground only the husks. I did get a seed or two and some twigs. Hard to pick out of a hot skillet! The ones I bought online were much more clean than the ones I bought in a local Asian grocery. There was some grit. I will clean them better next time.
Man, it was good!
I didn’t get forehead sweat like with good barbecue, but it cleared my sinuses!