Chinese Chili Sauce
This spicy homemade condiment goes great on everything!
Cooking Summary
Ingredients: (detailed list)
- Main Ingredients: Fresno chili pepper, Chao Tian Jiao pepper, garlic, oil
- Seasoning: vinegar, sugar, salt, ground bean sauce, sesame oil
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Top 3 Mistakes
- Overheating the chili oil:
Keep the oil gentle enough to lightly fry the ingredients without much color. If it gets too hot, lower the heat and add room-temperature oil instead of letting the mixture burn.
- Burning the garlic early:
Watch the aromatics closely once they hit the hot oil. Follow the recipe’s heat and timing, moving on when they become fragrant rather than letting them turn dark and bitter.
- Mixing garlic and chili early:
Keep the chopped garlic and peppers in separate bowls during prep. The garlic goes into the oil first, and the peppers follow once it is fragrant, so combining them loses that control.
Overview
Have you ever held a strange jar of chili sauce in your hand, trying to figure out if it's spicy enough for you... or if it's too spicy? Or a fresh bottle of hot sauce? It's hard to know what they actually taste like simply by reading the descriptions and looking at the packaging. And once you buy it, you have to commit to the whole amount!
That's why we like to make our own chili sauce from scratch. Since we know exactly what goes in it, we can control the heat, the brightness, and the flavor. It's perfectly customizable to the taste you want!
This chili sauce can serve as a condiment to your favorite rice and noodle dishes, like Yangzhou Fried Rice, Vegetable Lo Mein, and Beef Chow Fun. It's great as a dipping sauce for snacks like Egg Rolls and Potstickers. You can also use this in any recipes that call for chili sauce, such as Mapo Tofu.
Ingredients
Why this recipe
Most chinese chili sauce recipes online are tested only a handful of times. My dad used to make this dish multiple times a day, every day, for 60+ years and can make this in his sleep.
I know you'll love it as much as our community does! This recipe has over 86.1K views, 2.6K likes on YouTube.
Types of chili peppers
You don't have to use exactly the same chili peppers we do. Use what's available to you, or experiment with different varieties for new flavors and levels of heat.
Chao Tian Jiao chili peppers, for example, may not be available at your local grocery store. Chili peppers with comparable heat levels are serrano and tabasco peppers, so if you see either of those, they'll make fantastic substitutions.
To go milder and fruitier, you can try using jalapeños or New Mexico chili peppers.
To go hotter, you can opt for chili peppers that have higher Scoville Units. Habaneros and Scotch bonnets are off the charts for us, but if that's your thing, give it a try and let us know! We'll cheer you on from here...
Don't use animal oils
For homemade sauces that you might use for more than one meal, you have to take into consideration how well the ingredients keep. Animal fats and oils, like lard, go rancid very, very quickly. We recommend using plant-based oils for this chili sauce recipe, ideally a cooking oil with a neutral flavor.
Great options include peanut oil, corn oil, canola oil, rice bran oil, and vegetable oil. Refined olive oil and avocado oil work well too, but they may be pricier.
Adding ground bean sauce
Ground bean sauce is the secret to rounding out the flavor of this chili sauce. Along with the other seasonings, it gives the chili sauce a deeper, more complex taste other than spice and heat and pain.
If you're making the chili sauce and it's looking, smelling, or tasting too spicy, you can increase the amount of ground bean sauce to mellow out the flavor.
This recipe as it's written now is actually a bit spicier than what my family usually makes! My dad usually does an almost 1:1 ratio of ground bean sauce to fresh chili peppers. We like our chili sauce super friendly.
How to make Chinese Chili Sauce
Prepare garlic & chili peppers
Smash, peel, and mince the garlic (4 clove). Set the minced garlic aside.
Trim the stems off the chili peppers (6 oz). Cut them open lengthwise, then chop into thin strips. Turn the strips sideways and dice into small pieces.
Do the same for the Chao Tian Jiao peppers: trim, and dice.
Set the diced chili peppers aside in a separate bowl. Don't mix them in with the garlic yet, since we'll be adding them to the wok at different stages.
Fry garlic & peppers
Turn the stove up to the highest heat, and heat up the wok until it's hot, not quite smoking. Once the wok is hot, turn the heat down to medium or low. Add the oil (3 tbsp), and let it warm up to 250° F (121° C), which is not very hot!
You don't want the oil to burn the ingredients, but rather lightly fry them. The ingredients should not take on much color as they cook. If your oil gets too hot, lower the heat and add some room temperature oil to cool it back down.
Add the minced garlic and continuously stir. The heat and the oil will start bringing out the garlic flavor, and you'll start to smell the aroma very quickly.
Once the garlic is fragrant, add the diced chili peppers. Turn the heat down more if the oil is still rather hot, or keep it at medium if it's not too hot.
The chili peppers should bubble and sizzle calmly. No explosions! Keep stirring and mixing, letting the oil heat up and cook the ingredients through. The oil should start absorbing the red color from the chili peppers.
Cook on medium for about a minute, then turn the heat to low. Cook on low for two minutes.
Season sauce
Add vinegar (1 tsp) to enhance the flavor and help the chili sauce last longer.
Also add sugar (1 tsp), salt (1 tsp), and ground bean sauce (1 tbsp). Mix well to incorporate the seasonings, and cook for an additional 40-50 seconds.
Add sesame oil (1 tsp), mix it in, and turn the heat off.
This sauce will keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a year. When you use it, remember to scoop into the sauce using a clean, dry spoon. Be sure to toss it at any sign of mold, unfamiliar discoloration, or rancid odors.
Enjoy!
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Made with love ❤️
We started Made With Lau to celebrate Cantonese culture and honor the legacy of our wonderful parents, Jenny and Chung Sun Lau.
Our hope is that these recipes and stories help you spread the joy, love, and nostalgia that I felt growing up.
