Making chilli sauce
If you've never made chilli sauce before, it's surprisingly easy. The challenge is to give it a depth of flavour, not just a chilli burn. Try the guide below. Maybe you'll enter this year's competition with the results 😉
To make a chilli sauce, you should ideally have each of these four components.
1. Heat
There's a huge variety of chilli peppers from all over the world, each with its own flavour notes and heat. You can use dried or fresh. Scotch bonnets and habaneros are popular for their fruity heat, but you don't need many of them! Take out the seeds if you want a less spicy kick.
2. Body
Unless you want a nuclear-strength sauce that will make anyone cry, you'll need to add body to your sauce. Onions and tomatoes are popular choices, but you could also use sweet peppers, or fruit such as mango or pineapple.
3. Herbs and spices
Herbs and spices give it flavour. Garlic and ginger are good choices. Other options might be ground coriander, paprika, mustard, cloves or black pepper.
4. Liquid
You'll need some liquid to give your sauce a good consistency. Vinegar is a classic choice: it helps preserve the sauce as well as giving it a nice tang. The vinegar mellows during cooking, and further once your sauce has been bottled and stored for a while. Add some sugar to balance the tartness. You could also use fruit juice, or just water.
Technique
You can throw everything into a pan, boil it and blend it. That will work. But you'll get a better depth of flavour if you fry your vegetables slowly first, and fry the spices too, before adding the chillies and liquid. Blend until smooth, adding more liquid if it's too thick.
Notes
- Try a splash of soy sauce for an extra kick of flavour.
- Different chillies release their burn at different times. Some hit you straight away, others build slowly. Combining several kinds gives a balanced release of heat and a structure to your sauce, instead of a back-of-the-throat burn.
- Try alternatives to sugar for sweetness: honey, maple syrup, agave syrup or even treacle.