Homemade Asian Hot Sauce Recipes

With all the ripe chiles coming to market now, buy a bunch to make homemade hot sauce(s). Prepare a large batch and divide it up, perhaps as holiday gifts! A few pointers and then a number of recipes on the site for you to try.

I recently wrote about the varying degrees of heat in chile peppers. Don’t let that discourage your tinkering. If you cannot find hot red ones, use hot green chiles. Or, combine some hot green ones with not-so-hot red ones. Chile blend! The color may not be solid red or orange-red but you will have concocted a zippy condiment.

When cutting the chiles, I don’t wear gloves. (With all the chiles I use, I’d waste a lot of gloves.) Instead, I employ one of the stem pieces to usher the chiles onto my knife and deposit it in a bowl. My fingers do not touch the insides. If I do get some chile heat on my fingers, I wash my hands with coarse salt and soap. (I wear contact lenses and have mistakenly touched my eyes with chile tainted fingers. Perhaps you've experienced that kind of pain?)

You can usually smell the heat of the chiles as you’re making the hot sauce. It typically makes me sweat a bit as I hover over the pot or a bowl of cut chiles. If you’re willing, give the chile a taste before using. No chewing or swallowing. Just press a slice against your tongue. If it’s super hot, eat a spoon of rice, cracker or something that will absorb the heat. Don’t do that little experiment if you’re super sensitive.

And if you fear too much chile heat, during prep, remove and some of the fleshy insides and seeds -- where the heat is located. You can always add some back later!

Chile sauces can be tweaked. They change as they cook, rest, and ferment (if applicable). You can adjust the flavor to your liking as you go along. The sauces are very elastic. They also keep a long time under refrigeration.

Four recipes on the site for you to tackle and experiment with:

• Thai Sweet Chile Sauce recipe: You can control the heat and sweet.
• Homemade Vietnamese Chile Garlic Sauce: Tuong ot toi is great for dim sum too.
• Homemade Sriracha Chile Sauce recipe: One of the favorite recipes at VWK.
• Singapore Sriracha Chile Sauce Recipe: Elegant and another fabulous recipe from Chris Tan.