Lemongrass Chili Sauce

Hello World! It’s me, Shelly!

For my first ever blog post, I wanted to write about one of my loves: hot sauce. If you know me IRL (in real life) then you would know how much I LOVE hot sauce. I seriously eat it with anything and everything!

After eating jars and jars of pre-made hot sauce, I finally decided to take the plunge and make my own. I chose this recipe for Lemongrass Chili Sauce mainly because I bought a big bunch of lemongrass from the grocery store and am currently trying to finish using it.

For those who think it might be a difficult task to make your own hot sauce, I can tell you now that it is NOT at all. The only problem might be that your house/apartment may smell very “asian” (as my friend described it) for a day. This is an adapted recipe from Wandering Chopsticks, my favorite asian food blog.

1 cup of fresh chili peppers (i used thai bird’s eye chili because i had so much of it)
1/2 cup of dried chili pods (optional)
2 stalks of lemongrass
1/4 -1/2 cup of vegetable oil (not olive as the flavor will overpower the sauce)
4 garlic cloves
1 small onion
2 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of vinegar
2-4 tablespoons of fish sauce
a healthy squeeze of sriracha hot sauce

Use a food professor to finely chop up the fleshy white part of the lemongrass and added it to 1/4 cup of vegetable oil over medium-hot heat. As that is slowly cooking, dice the small onion and garlic and add it to the hot oil. If the onion and garlic cooks too quickly, turn down the heat. You want these aromatics to slowly soften, not to burn – you don’t want a burnt chili sauce right?

Then, the next step is to grind up the chili peppers in small batches, both the fresh and dried ones. Add the chili into the oil as you grind them up.

Let the sauce cook for a few more minutes and then begin putting in the rest of your spices. Adjust seasoning as you please. If you want your sauce to be more red, put in more sriracha. Cook your sauce until it softens and add more oil to your sauce so that your sauce is slightly covered in oil. This will help you prevent it from drying out in the fridge.

Put it in a jar (I used Glad tupperware), throw it in the fridge and enjoy! This should keep for at least 3 months, if not longer.

Shelly’s Tips

Be careful of your hands – it does get pretty spicy, so don’t touch your eyes and wash your hands!!

One way to use this sauce is with this recipe, Spicy Chicken Wings from Blazing Hot Wok, it’s real good with a side of steaming hot rice.

I’ve been using this sauce for about a month on almost EVERYTHING – it’s my new sriracha! Let me know if you ever try it and how you like it!

0 Comments

Wandering Chopsticks wrote:

Thanks for trying my recipe. I made three 24-oz jars to bring up to my parents last week, but airport security said there was too much liquid and I had to toss it all. 🙁

My parents love this stuff and they're down to the last jar. It's really all about the lemongrass. My mom says my regular chili garlic sauce is good, but they prefer it with lemongrass. Gotta make more then.

Posted 2.2.12 Reply
shellyinreallife wrote:

yay! when you make it, let me know how it goes. i really love the lemongrass flavor in this hotsauce, it's unlike any other hot sauce i've tried!

Posted 2.2.12 Reply
Derek Chiang wrote:

Nice. Sounds like it'll go well with fish as well. I think I'll make this as my own sriracha too haha.

Posted 2.2.12 Reply
shellyinreallife wrote:

lol – like what? coding for magento?

Posted 2.2.12 Reply
Derek Lei wrote:

write about web development!!!

Posted 2.2.12 Reply

Lemongrass Chili Sauce