I am kind of addicted to chile sauces. It’s true! I dab spicy condiments onto pretty much everything I eat. My goal with this recipe was to create something akin to the Chili Garlic Sauce made by Huy Fong; that sauce is one of my favorites and I do believe I succeeded.
It was back when I made this homemade Sriracha recipe last fall that I realized there’s not much to making a delicious homemade hot chile sauce. And the one you see here is even easier, to be honest, because it’s not cooked. All you need to do is blend up some chiles with garlic, your choice of vinegar, a little sweetener and a bit of salt…then you end up with red hot awesomeness.
I used a bunch of fresh chiles from my garden in this garlic chile sauce recipe. I am a little embarrassed to admit this, but I have pretty much no idea what types of chiles they were because I did a crappy job labeling my plants this year. I do know that the little ones you see at the bottom of the photo below were super hot, though, and the other ones kind of varied. Because I wasn’t sure how hot this sauce would end up, I tasted it carefully as I was making it to see if it needed more vinegar or sweetener to tone down the heat. I suggest you do the same- make sure to taste as you go so you end up with sauce that’s to your liking.
You can use homegrown chiles if you have them, or feel free to purchase them from the market. If you are buying them, I think red jalapeños or habañeros would be a good choice because there are are pretty widely available. I’d substitute a red bell pepper for a couple of the chiles to tone down the sauce if you’re not a hot sauce junkie, but this is meant to be hot; you’re meant to just use a little to enhance Asian (and other) dishes.
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Chile Garlic Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- *about 15 fresh hot red chile peppers I used all different types of chiles that I grew in my garden; if you don't want it to be super hot, you can include a few mild peppers, if you like, cleaned, stems trimmed off and roughly chopped
- *1 teaspoon sea salt
- *4 garlic cloves or more to taste, peeled and roughly chopped
- *2 tablespoons palm sugar or dark brown sugar
- *1/4 cup brown rice vinegar
Instructions
- 1. Process all ingredients in a high speed blender until smooth (feel free to leave it a bit chunky if you like...I did). Use a spoon to taste a tiny bit (be careful...it's spicy!) and adjust the seasonings to your preference. This fresh sauce contains no preservatives, so be sure to store it in the refrigerator.
