This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you buy through them — at no extra cost to you. My scores are never influenced by this. This Fly By Jing variety pack includes all four chili crisp products from the brand.
The Fly By Jing 4-pack ($34.99 on Amazon) gives you the full lineup in one box: Original, Xtra Spicy, Xtra Crunchy, and Sweet & Spicy. Three are chili crisps, one is a chili sauce. The oil quality is the connective tissue — consistent, flavor-forward, and better than most of what’s in this category. The Xtra Spicy earns the top spot for adding real, lingering heat to the FBJ flavor base. The real move: mix these together strategically. Best pick: Xtra Spicy. Best value: the 4-pack itself.
Fly By Jing 4-Pack Comparison: What We’re Comparing
The Fly By Jing 4-pack runs $34.99 on Amazon — $8.75 per jar, $1.46/oz. You get the Original Sichuan Chili Crisp, the Xtra Spicy, the Xtra Crunchy, and the Sweet & Spicy. All four come in 6 oz jars with identical label design. If you’ve read the individual reviews, you already know what each one does. This Fly By Jing comparison is the other question: how do they actually compare when you line them up?
The short answer is that three of the four are doing variations on the same chili crisp theme, and one isn’t really in the same category at all. The oil is the connective tissue across the lineup. Everything else — heat, crunch, flavor profile — diverges from there.
I reviewed all four individually: Original, Xtra Spicy, Xtra Crunchy, Sweet & Spicy. The full breakdown on each is there. This post is about how they relate to each other and which one to reach for when.
The Comparison Table
| Product | Category | Heat | Crunch | Settlement | Sugar-Free | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xtra Spicy | Chili Crisp | 4 / 5 | Low — chewy | Acceptable–Good | Yes | GOOD |
| Sweet & Spicy | Chili Sauce | 3 / 5 | None — jammy | Acceptable | No | GOOD |
| Original | Chili Crisp | 3 / 5 | Low — chewy | Borderline | Yes | GOOD |
| Xtra Crunchy | Chili Crisp | 2 / 5 | High — seeds/beans | Excellent | No | AVERAGE |
What Connects These Products
The Fly By Jing variety pack gives you a direct side-by-side comparison. The ingredients lists across the three chili crisps — Original, Xtra Spicy, and Xtra Crunchy — are more similar than you’d expect. Rapeseed oil, soybean oil, dried chili peppers, fermented soybeans, garlic, shallot, mushroom powder, ginger, sesame oil, salt, Sichuan pepper, seaweed powder. The proportions shift between products. The base ingredients are largely the same.
All four are vegan. All four are woman-owned and Asian-owned. All four are certified B Corp. Two have added sugar (Xtra Crunchy and Sweet & Spicy). One contains wheat (Sweet & Spicy, via the black vinegar). The Xtra Crunchy is nut-free — the crunch comes from beans and seeds, not nuts.
The contact is support@flybyjing.com. There’s a real brand operation behind these products — Sichuan-sourced ingredients, LA-based company, consistent quality control across the line. That shows.
The Visual Differences
Line them up and the differences are immediately visible. The Original and Xtra Spicy look the most similar — dark, rich oil with fine bits suspended in it. Put both on a white plate and the Xtra Spicy’s oil is busier, more active-looking. More micro-bits floating, more particulate matter. The spices that provide the extra heat are visually present in the oil even before you stir.
The Xtra Crunchy is visually unlike anything else in the box. Dense with seeds, beans, and bits — the oil-to-solids ratio is flipped compared to the Original. Where Original skews oil-heavy (Borderline on the settlement scale), Xtra Crunchy is Excellent — almost entirely solids. The oil itself is lighter, more orange — noticeably different from the deep brown of the other two chili crisps.
The Sweet & Spicy is its own thing visually. Dark mahogany, goopy, everything coated in sugar syrup. The oil has a similar orange-amber tint to the Xtra Crunchy, but the consistency is thick and jammy rather than seed-dense.
The Sweet & Spicy is labeled Sichuan Chili Sauce, not Sichuan Chili Crisp. It comes in the same box, with the same label design, and I bought it the first time thinking it was part of the chili crisp lineup. It’s not. It’s a sauce — no crispy bits, no crunch, different use case entirely. If you’re shopping the Fly By Jing range expecting four chili crisps, you’re getting three and a sauce. The individual review evaluates it on chili sauce criteria, where it earns GOOD.
The Oil Layer
The oil across the three chili crisps is the most consistent thing in the lineup — and it’s the thing that separates Fly By Jing from most of the category. It’s dark, brown-tinted, and flavor-forward. You can taste the oil on its own and get something real: Sichuan peppercorn, mushroom, a hint of sesame. That matters. It means the high oil proportion in the Original and Xtra Spicy isn’t dead space — it’s doing flavor work.
Compare that to the Lao Gan Ma benchmark, where the soybean oil comes at you first and doesn’t do much. Fly By Jing’s oil is a whole different tool. I described this in the individual reviews as a “whole-jar product” — the oil and seasonings were designed together, not as two separate components sharing a container.
The Xtra Crunchy breaks from this. Its soybean oil is lighter, more neutral — closer in character to the Sweet & Spicy. There’s so much seed and bean material that the oil plays a different role: it’s a binder, not the feature. That’s the right call for a product built around texture, but it means the Xtra Crunchy doesn’t share the flavor-forward oil quality that the Original and Xtra Spicy have.
Original vs. Xtra Spicy: A Closer Look
These two are the hardest to tell apart before you taste them. Same base ingredients, same oil character, similar visual profile. The Original’s settlement was Borderline — roughly 50/50 oil to solids. The Xtra Spicy has a better fill, closer to two-thirds solids.
The bigger difference is the heat. The Original‘s heat comes from Sichuan peppercorn — tingly, numbing, front-loaded, and gone within a minute or two. The Xtra Spicy‘s heat arrives the same way but adds a second layer underneath: a cayenne or Chinese red chili burn that builds differently and lingers for 3–4 minutes. It’s not a dramatically hotter product. It’s heat from an additional source, and it sticks around longer. That’s the real distinction between these two.
Both share the same texture weakness: soft, chewy bits rather than anything crispy. The peppercorn goes soft in oil. That’s just what happens with the ingredient set they’re using. If crunch matters to you, neither of these is the jar.
Best For…
This variety pack is best for Best for heat: Xtra Spicy. The only one with heat that lingers. Manageable but real. The jar to reach for when a dish needs a kick.
Best for flavor complexity: Original. The most layered flavor profile — Sichuan peppercorn, mushroom, seaweed, garlic — with the best oil quality. The workhorse if you’re only buying one.
Best for crunch: Xtra Crunchy. Not close. The jar is almost entirely solids. The crunch fades to paste on the back half of the bite, but the front half delivers what no other FBJ product does.
Best for dipping: Sweet & Spicy. Built for it — thick, coats food, holds where you put it. Dumplings, egg rolls, anything you’d dip. Its own lane.
Best for gifting: The 4-pack itself. Four distinct products, clean branding, good variety. The comparison is half the fun.
Best value: The 4-pack at $1.46/oz. Individual FBJ jars run $2.50–3.00/oz. The pack cuts that nearly in half.
The Mixing Angle
This is where the lineup gets interesting. Each product has a clear strength and a clear weakness, and the weaknesses are complementary:
The Original has the best flavor but not enough crunch. The Xtra Crunchy has the crunch but not the Sichuan character. Mix them together and you get something closer to what both are individually trying to be — flavor complexity with actual texture. I’ve tried it. It works.
The Xtra Spicy is a heat injection. If you have a jar of something that’s great on flavor but has no kick, a tablespoon or two of this mixed in solves that without overpowering the base product’s character.
The Sweet & Spicy is the one I’d leave alone. The sweetness is distinctive enough that mixing it into another jar just makes that jar sweeter, which is usually not the goal.
The oils across the three chili crisps are similar enough that blending doesn’t create clashing flavor profiles. That’s a credit to the brand — the lineup was designed as a system, even if they don’t market it that way. Buying the 4-pack and mixing strategically is how you get the most out of these products.
Packaging and Value
$34.99 for four 6 oz jars — $8.75 each, $1.46/oz. Compare that to buying any single FBJ jar at retail ($15–22 for 6 oz, or $2.50–3.00/oz). The 4-pack is the obvious move if you’re exploring the brand. Buy it once, find your two favorites, then buy those as singles going forward.
If you already know you like the Original and just want more of it, skip the pack and buy singles. The comparison value is only there if you haven’t done the comparison yet.
All four jars use the same format — glass, wide-mouth, easy to fork into. Refrigerate after opening.
Fly By Jing Variety Pack — Final Rankings
| Rank | Product | Category | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Xtra Spicy | Chili Crisp | GOOD |
| 2 | Sweet & Spicy | Chili Sauce | GOOD |
| 3 | Original | Chili Crisp | GOOD |
| 4 | Xtra Crunchy | Chili Crisp | AVERAGE |
The oil consistency across this lineup is the real story. These products share a common base that’s noticeably better than most of what’s in this category — flavor-forward, designed as part of the recipe, not an afterthought. The individual reviews rated most of them AVERAGE because the crunch-to-oil ratio on the Original and Xtra Spicy is the defining weakness, and the Xtra Crunchy traded Sichuan character for bean volume. But as a system — buying the pack and mixing strategically — this lineup is more than the sum of its parts. I’m excited to keep tasting more from this brand.
Is the Fly By Jing quad pack worth it?
At around $33, you’re paying roughly $8.25 per jar — a slight premium over buying individually, but the value is in the comparison. If you’ve only tried one variety and want to figure out which one actually fits your cooking, the quad pack is the most efficient way to do that.
What’s the difference between Fly By Jing Original and Extra Spicy?
The ingredients list reads very similarly — same base, same structure. The visual difference is subtle: Extra Spicy has more visible micro-bits of spice floating in the oil, and the heat source is different. Original’s heat comes primarily from Sichuan peppercorn, which is tingly and numbing. Extra Spicy adds heat that builds from a different place and lingers longer.
Is Fly By Jing Sweet & Spicy a chili crisp?
No — and the label doesn’t claim it is. It’s a sauce, not a chili crisp. There are no crispy bits, the texture is gooey from the sugars, and the flavor profile is completely different. It comes in the quad pack box but belongs in its own category.
Is Fly By Jing Extra Crunchy actually crunchy?
Yes, noticeably so. The Extra Crunchy has a high ratio of seeds and beans relative to oil — visually and texturally very different from the others. The oil is also lighter and more orange-tinted. The seed-and-bean flavor comes with it, so it works best somewhere that flavor belongs.
Are all Fly By Jing products vegan?
Yes, all four are vegan. Two are not sugar-free: Extra Crunchy and Sweet & Spicy both contain added sugar. Sweet & Spicy also contains wheat, which is the only allergen across the four.
What food pairings work best for each Fly By Jing variety?
Original is the most versatile — eggs, noodles, rice, anything. Extra Spicy is best where you want heat to lead and delicate flavors won’t get buried. Extra Crunchy adds crunch and seed-forward flavor — works well on soft dishes like congee, rice bowls, or tacos. Sweet & Spicy is a dipping sauce, plain and simple — egg rolls, dumplings, anything you’d dip.