Homemade Sweet Chili Sauce

Sweet Chili Sauce is one of our favorite sauces. Especially for Asian dishes like Noodles with chicken and vegetables it goes very well.

Usually I buy a sauce from my local supermarket… until I looked at the ingredients of the our favorite sauce, and I found it not difficult to make it myself. The one I buy has (almost) the same ingredients I used, without artificial flavors and coloring.

First time I made this sauce, I used sugar and canned chili peppers as I couldn’t find fresh ones. I threw it away, it was just terrible, mainly caused by the canned chilies. Even though they were canned just with some salt and vinegar they had a strange taste, I even wouldn’t use them to prepare a dish.

Also, instead of sugar, as in the original sauce used, I replaced it by honey. With my first try I didn’t like the taste given by the sugar. I recommend to use a honey of high quality. Most honeys you will find in large supermarkets are mixed honeys from all over the world. Try to find a honey called “beekeeper honey”. You will find these also in the stores, just look closely on the label from where the honey is coming from. This usually is not mixed by any other honey.

What you need:

150 ml lukewarm water
200 ml honey (or 150-200 gr sugar)
110 gr fresh red hot chili peppers (makes appr. 100 gr cleaned peppers)
34 gr garlic cloves (about 5 large cloves making 30 gr cleaned)
1 tsp white vinegar
½ tsp salt
2 tsp corn flour
50 ml water

How to prepare:

Cut the chili peppers in halves and remove the seeds (wearing gloves and do not touch your eyes while working with the chilies). Clean the garlic cloves.

Mix the honey with the lukewarm water to dissolve.

In a blender combine the chili peppers, garlic, water, honey, white acid and salt and blend until the chilies and garlic have been chopped into small pieces.

Add the liquid into a pot and bring to a boil. Remove as much foam as possible with a slotted spoon and let cook on medium heat for 10-15 minutes.

Mix the remaining water with the cornflour and add to the liquid. Bring to boil once until thickening.

Fill into a bottle and let cool.