Homemade chili oil, an essential item in my home kitchen. When I was younger I loved spicy food, the spicier the better. These days my stomach can’t handle too much spicy food. That doesn’t stop me from enjoying it though, I just need to eat it with moderation. I used to love putting raw hot peppers into my meals, but now I like putting a bit of chili oil on my meals. While there is a lot of different flavour of chili oils in stores, something about homemade just hits differently. It sure helps that it’s pretty simple to make and can be stored in the fridge.
Chili oil, the perfect compliment
I like to drizzle a bit of chili oil on noodles, wontons and can also use it for dipping sauces for my dumplings. You will find many chili oil recipe and I think it’s one of the most versatile condiments that you can store in your home. You can choose ingredients to add or subtract based on your preference or keep it very simple with just chili flakes. Also you can control the spiciness by choose different type of chili flakes you use (YES! there are different type of chili flakes with different spiciness level). Also depending on the ingredient you add, it add different flavour to the chili oil. The most simple recipe is with oil, salt and chili flakes. I personally like to add a few more ingredients to give it more flavour.
My mom makes her own chili oil at home. I remember that one of the biggest mistakes she always makes is heating the oil too quickly and burning all of her ingredients. When I make it, I’m very careful not to use high heat when heating the oil. It takes a bit of patience on my hand but I find it’s well worth the time to heat the oil slowly.
Pro-tip
- Don’t try to heat the oil up too quickly. Heat oil on medium.
- Keep it on medium when frying the shallots and green onions.
- When adding the chili flakes and other ingredients, make sure turn the heat to low to prevent burning
Homemade Chili Oil
Equipment
- 1 heavy bottom pan
Ingredients
- 1¼ cup vegetable oil
- 3 green onions cut into strips
- 2 shallots sliced
- 5-10 dry chili grounded
- 3 ½ tbsp Korean chili flakes
- 2 star anise
- 2½ tsp Sichuan peppercorn
- 2 tbsp white sesame seeds
- salt to season optional
- cinnamon sticks (optional)
Instructions
- Cut the green onions into 3 sections and then into strips. Peel and cut the shallots in half. Cut into slices.
- Crush dry chili either with blender or mortar and pestle.
- Pour the oil into a pot and turn to medium. It's important to heat up the oil slowly. Add in shallots and green onions
- Fry the shallots and green onions for 30 minutes until fragrant. Don't be tempted to turn up the heat as this will burn the green onions and shallot, keep it on medium. The oil should have small bubbles on the surface.
- Once it's fragrant, scoop out the green onions, shallots and discard.
- Turn the heat down to low, add in chili flakes, dry crushed chili, Sichuan peppercorns, star anise and sesame seeds. Let it cook for another 10 minutes on low.
- Take the pot off the heat and let it cool. You can at this point add salt.
- Make sure it's fully cooled (this will also help with the infusing the oil) before storing in an air tight container or jar. I used a 300ml jar.
- Store in the fridge for up to 3 months. Use a clean spoon to avoid contamination and spoiling the oil