Homemade Chili Garlic Sauce

Spice up your dishes with our latest obsession: a garlic-chili sauce featuring shallots, vinegar, sugar, sesame oil, and fish sauce. Perfect for dipping, drizzling, or marinating.

Long before the world declares its undying love for Sriracha, the rooster sauce from California, the quiet dingy lanes in the tanneries of erstwhile Calcutta was silently cooking up pot of hot garlic sauce which in due course of time has transformed the regular chicken, prawns and pork dishes to taste extraordinaire. Though the heat was too much for the sweet loving babus of Kolkata but none the less it was able to make a lasting impression on the culinary trails of Indo Chinese cuisine.

Much like California gold rush, eighties saw the rise of US’s most loved hot sauce till date – the Sriracha that acquired a cult status among the barbecue loving nation. Some even emphasised that it is the best thing ever happened after the sliced bread. Not many moons ago I too was Sriracha addict, for every reason or every occasion I had served Sriracha with almost everything, even that means smearing it on plain toasted bread. It is futile and difficult to argue with Sriracha addicts, the sauce that soon engulfed the food scenario of a nation and invent so many dishes.

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But when you are deprived of your daily dose of Sriracha, the alternatives arises. It was extremely difficult to give up the Sriracha addiction but the new homemade version of hot garlic sauce charmed us in more than one ways.

More than 200 years ago when the first Chinese settlers migrated to the eastern shores of Hooghly river, make Achipur their home, they might not have realised it then that in the coming century, this single migration step is going to revolutionize the Indian culinary scene. The very first birth place of Indo-Chinese cuisine. Later from the shores of Hooghly the Chinese settlers migrated to the city of Calcutta, small settlements of Chinese shoemakers, carpenters, dentist began to pop up in Bentick street, Burrabazar’s Aphing chowrasta (opium junction) and later a proper China Town, country’s first of its kind began to develop in Tiretta Bazaar. Decades later, on the eastern fringes of the city another China Town evolves – Tangra, to which every Kolkattan makes a yearly or monthly if you say so pilgrimage to chow on the hakka, manchurians, steam buns and hot garlic pork.

While Sriracha has its roots set deep in the coastal city of Si Racha in Thailand, this Indo-Chinese version of hot garlic sauce could be India’s answer to the global hot sauce quest. The type of chillies used in the sauce made all the difference. Whether you use dried Chinese hot red chile peppers or use fresh Thai bird-eye chillies, the sauce will remain fiery hot. So use the chilies as per your tolerance level, if it has gone beyond your limit then cool it down with white vinegar. Now like me if you too had a big bottle of fish sauce stocked in your pantry for months, then use it here. Else you can skip this. And last but not least, use peanut or sesame oil for the extra flavor.

Your very own hot garlic sauce is ready, and now you can make Sriracha feel jealous.

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Homemade Chili Garlic Sauce


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5 from 3 reviews

  • Author: Sukanya Ghosh
  • Total Time: 12 mins
  • Yield: 1 cup

Description

Spice up your dishes with our latest obsession: a garlic-chili sauce featuring shallots, vinegar, sugar, sesame oil, and fish sauce. Perfect for dipping, drizzling, or marinating.


Ingredients

  • Garlic (medium size) : 2 heads
  • Red Chilli pepper (dried or fresh) : 20-25
  • Shallots : 2
  • White Vinegar : 2-3 tbsp
  • Sugar : 1 tbsp
  • Peanut or sesame oil : 2-3 tbsp
  • Salt to taste
  • Fish sauce : 1 tsp (if using)

Instructions

  1. Peel the cloves of garlic and roast it lightly on a griddle with help of few drops of oil. You can dry roast it too, but with oil it releases a nice garlicy aroma.
  2. If you are using fresh Thai bird eye chilli, then you can chop them and directly proceed with the recipe.
  3. Else if you are using Chinese dried red chilli pepper, then de seed them and soak them in water till they become tender.
  4. In a blender, blend garlic, red chilli pepper, salt, sugar and vinegar to a fine paste.
  5. Mince the shallots.
  6. Heat the oil lightly, saute the shallots gently till the rawness disappear.
  7. Switch off the heat and add the chilli garlic paste, blend it well.
  8. Check for salt and sugar.
  9. Add fish sauce if you are using.
  10. Blend it well and let it stand for at least two hours before using it in the recipe.
  11. The waiting time will allow the flavors to mingle well.

Notes

You can blend the shallots together with the chilli garlic to get a smoother texture.
Since I love the shallots to be finely minced, hence I have not blended it. It gives a crunchy texture to the sauce. You can add oil without heating it too. Heating the oil releases the aroma though.

  • Prep Time: 10 mins
  • Cook Time: 2 mins
  • Category: Condiment
  • Cuisine: Indo-Chinese
What do YOU think? Leave a comment! (21) What do YOU think? Leave a comment! (21)
  1. I just made a small batch, half the recipe & it tastes great. Can’t wait to use it in some soup tonight & other meals. My only question is if I should refrigerate this & how long it lasts.






  2. Hi Frances, thank you so much for trying this out and loving it. This is usually a thick sauce, but you can thin it down with little more oil, the one you have used in the recipe. If you use water, to thin down the sauce, you have to adjust the other seasonings. Hope this helps.
    Regards, Sukanya

  3. `Hi there,
    Thank you for your lovely recipe. I made this sauce yesterday using our own chillies, it turned out lovely and its very fiery. It is also quite thick, Is there anything I can I add to thin it out slightly without spoiling the sauce?
    Kind regards,
    Frances






  4. Why deseed dried chilli?
    Why can’t seeds stay in the dried ones but are ok to stay in the fresh?
    When I use fresh the seeds stay in?
    Just wondering.
    Otherwise an amazing awesome sambal!!!!






  5. Lightly roast the peeled garlic cloves with a bit of oil….How is this done? What temp and for how long? Recipe looks fantastic, can’t wait to try it .

    1. Two heads of garlic means two bulbs of garlic. Not two cloves of garlic. Thanks for trying it out. Please do share your feedbacks.

  6. Why do you have to remove the seeds if using Chinese dried red chili peppers? It is a hotness issue or are they not very edilble? I have never worked with dried peppers before and need tips to make low-sodium sauces/pastes…

    1. Hi Matt, primarily the main reason to remove the seeds are because of hotness. If you are tolerant to the hot sauces you can skip that part. Second, since it is wet mixture, so while grinding, the sauce texture would be very coarse and also the half crushed seeds in every bite would not be too good to taste.
      Hope it helps

    1. Hi Kelly,
      Chilli flakes can be substituted but I personally do not favour it as most of the commercial chilli flakes brands has more seeds in it. The kind of texture you need for this sauce is possible by use of dried chillies only.

  7. Hi Karen, sesame flavor will be prominent but not overpowering. Else peanut oil will be good too. You can also use regular oil too. But peanut and sesame lends distinct flavor to the sauce

  8. I have to eat a low salt diet. I cannot find a ready made chili garlic sauce that does not have salt in it so I need to make my own. Could I make this recipe without salt? Also, I’m not sure that I can find the chilis you mention. Are there other chilis I can use?

    1. Hi Neha, thank you for writing to me. Yes, you can adjust the salt as per your requirements. The chillies that I have used are bird eye, but you can make it with regular Indian dried chillies, kashmiri or degi to get a rich color. You need to de-seed them before using.
      This sauce contains vinegar, so it can be stored in the fridge for up to a month. I usually make small amount of it.
      Hope it helps

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