When I was in university, I lived with a Taiwanese lady who married an Indonesian man and subsequently lived in Indonesia for many years. She would make me a lot of delicious and spicy food from Indonesia. She also has this homemade chili sauce that she made by her self. While I forgot to ask her for for the recipe, I’ve kind of figured it out based on my memory on how it taste.
Whenever she made this chili sauce, there was a lot of coughing involved because the spiciness. I remember using a quarter of the jar of chili sauce in my instant ramen! Yea, I can eat spicy food back in the day. Not so much now but I still love spicy food… just in moderation.
These past few days I’ve been craving this chili sauce. One day, I saw a local farmer’s market selling fresh veggies and I was inspired to make some chili sauce because I would remember that she would buy basket full of chilies from farmer’s market. Unfortunately they didn’t have chili in my local farmer’s market. I drove an hour to larger farmer’s market and I bought 2kg of chili. I used 1kg for my first recipe. I have to say it was delicious. My husband is now using it to cook on almost everything.
Ingredients:
The peppers I am using are cayenne peppers. The ones I bought are a mixture of both red and green. There are wilted ones that I have to pick out some. The rest of the ingredients are pretty simple, it’s just tomatoes, shallots and garlic. In addition, you need some sugar, salt and vinegar (I used rice vinegar).
I chose cayenne pepper because that is what is available for me here in Canada. The cayenne peppers are hot but if you like it hotter then certainly choose a different pepper.
How to make it
The one I advice I would give is wear some gloves! Wear some nitrile gloves when handling the cayenne peppers because it was burn your fingers. Also wear some type of safety googles when frying the chili sauce. I also turned my range on max to take away all the fumes so it doesn’t stay in your house.
You want to remove the stem on all of the cayenne peppers, WEAR gloves when doing this part.
The first you want to do is mince all your ingredients. I used a food processor to mince all my ingredients. I started off with the shallots and garlic. Once it’s minced I take it out on a plate or bowl and set it aside. Then I mince the tomatoes in the food processor (you don’t want to blend it too fine). Lastly you mince the cayenne peppers. Then put into a bowl.
While this next step is not really about cooking but it’s important to do. Rinse off your food processor and either put it in a dishwasher or wash by hand with gloves! This will prevent the fumes from staying inside your house.
Start with oil in a large pot and heat it up on medium. Stir fry the shallots and garlic together until it’s fragrant. Once it’s fragrant, add in the cayenne peppers and fry it until you can smell the cayenne peppers (make sure to have windows open and/or range hood on).
Add in your tomatoes and add in sugar, salt and vinegar. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes, taste it and see if you need to add more vinegar, salt or sugar. Once the excess liquid is mostly gone, then it’s done. Let it cool and put into a clean container or jar in the fridge. Since most of the liquid is gone, you will see mostly oil inside the chili sauce, this is good, it’s going to help preserve the sauce.
If you are cooking with it, use a small spoonful. It’s spicy and powerful enough for you to put only a little bit.
Pro-tip
- Wear gloves and safety glasses (optional but recommended) when handling cayenne peppers
- Mince everything in a food processor as it will cut down on the prep time and also saves you a lot of tears.
- Adjust the amount of ingredients based on what you like, if you like it with less spicy, use less cayenne peppers and add more tomatoes, garlic and shallots.
- If you don’t think the flavour has come out fully, put a bit of oil and continue frying the sauce, it will help to bring out the fragrance of the sauce.
Spicy Homemade Chili sauce
Ingredients
- ½ lbs Chili peppers
- ½ lbs tomatoes 3 roma tomatoes
- ¼ lb shallots 3
- ½ bulb garlic
- 2½ tbsp rice vinegar
- 2½ tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp salt
- ¼ cup neutral oil
Instructions
- Peel the garlic and shallots.
- Cut off the tops of the tomato .
- Remove the stems on the chili peppers. Wear gloves for this.
- Put the garlic and shallots into the food processor to mince. Remove and place into a tray or bowl
- Use the food processor to mince the tomatoes, put the minced tomatoes into a tray or bowl.
- Put the chili peppers into food processor and pulse until the chili are minced. If you like bigger chunks, you can grind it for less. Alternatively you can use a mortle and pestle as well.
- Set aside the chili.
- Put the heat on medium and add some oil. Once the oil is heated up, fry the shallots and garlic until fragrant.
- Add in the chili and fry for about 10 minutes.
- Add in the tomatoes and continue to cook for about 10 minutes
- Add in vinegar, salt and sugar and mix. Reduce your heat to low and let it simmer.
- Taste and add vinegar, sugar or salt to your liking and continue to simmer until most of the moisture is gone, about 20 minutes. It should be fragrant.
- Once most of the moisture is out of the sauce, the chili sauce is done. Cool and put into a clean and dry jar.
- You can use this sauce as a dipping sauce, or topping for your noodles.
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