This Chili Garlic Sauce recipe combines sweet, sour, and spicy with a slight pungent garlicky flavor. If you are looking for Asian sweet and spicy dipping sauce for dumplings or spring rolls or a sauce you can add to any dishes you cook, you are in the right place.
Cook chili garlic sauce with me!
What can you eat with this chili garlic sauce?
I use it for a wide variety of meals, such as a marination, dipping sauce, sandwich sauce, barbeque sauce, salad, and additional condiments to my stir-fried veggies. And this sauce is the best dipping sauce for spring rolls and dumplings. As flexible as the sauce you buy from the market, this sauce can stay in the refrigerator for months. Although it looks pretty red, the spiciness level is very mild.
Due to my inflammatory conditions, I created this garlicky sauce to substitute the highly processed chili sauce I usually bought in the grocery shop. As someone who used to eat chili sauce with almost everything, I had to come up with healthier, homemade, and naturally sweetened options. That way, I can control the ingredients and know what I put in my body.
And guess what, this sauce is better than the one I usually bought. Now, I proudly skip the condiments aisle whenever I go to the grocery shop.
Ingredients, notes & tips to make chili garlic sauce
Natural Honey
I use natural honey. Honey contains anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant properties and numerous health benefits. Due to its similar sweetness to sugar, honey is a great natural sweetener. However, heating honey makes it lose its enzymes and reduces the vitamins and minerals, so add the honey last when the mixture cools to room temperature.
Chilli coarse
The texture of the chili course is in between flakes and powder. The closest resemblance is gochugaru chili powder, so feel free to use it for this recipe. If you like it less spicy, reduce the chili by 50%. You may also use fresh chili, like most Thai sweet sauce recipes. But I find it tastes better and lighter with this chili course, plus it has a longer shelf life due to the dryness.
Garlic
When it comes to garlic, I prefer to use fresh ones. Smash or grate them to bring out the natural flavor of garlic. Another option is using pastels and mortar to smash them. If you are thinking of swapping the fresh garlic for powdered, try not to, as it gives almost no taste to the sauce.
All-natural white vinegar
Commonly used in condiments, vinegar adds acetic acid to preserve the sauce and strengthen the flavor. That’s when you taste a bit of sharpness in some condiment. In addition, vinegar helps reduce blood sugar and help with digestion, so you might want to get some health benefits whenever you add sauce to your food.
Sauces complement many foods and elevate the taste better. If eating salad is difficult for you, try adding sauce. It might dramatically change the way you look at salad.
But you want to be mindful of the ingredients in the sauce. Since most sauces from the grocery store are associated with preservatives, flavoring, sugar and tons of harmful chemicals, some people would give up consuming them.
Giving up sauce to me means limiting many healthy food choices. That is why I make sauces on my own. And most of my sauce recipes are made easy using natural ingredients and take less than 10 minutes. If you are into healthy salad dressing sauce, check out my post.
Other sauce recipes you might like
- Nước chấm – Vietnamese dipping sauce
- Creamy & spicy mango vinaigrette
- Japanese ginger and carrot salad dressing sauce
- Mediterranean salad dressing
Tips to naturally extend the shelf life:
- This sauce contains vinegar, which can be acidic. So, use a glass jar to store this sauce so the acid won’t react to it.
- Wash and sterilize the jar & the cap before pouring the sauce in. This is to prevent bacterial growth.
- Add cinnamon stick as a natural preservative. Cinnamon sticks contain anti-microbial, which helps preserve the sauce.
Chili Garlic Sauce – Thai Sweet Sauce
Course: Side DishCuisine: ThaiDifficulty: Easy200
ml3
minutes3
minutes10
minutesAsian homemade sweet and spicy sauce. Great as a dipping sauce for dumplings, wontons, and spring rolls and as a condiment to any dish.
Ingredients
4 tbsp of honey
2 tbsp of chili coarse
3 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp of white vinegar
1 tsp of salt
1 and 1/2 tsp of corn flour – Dissolve with 2 tbsp of water
1/2 cup of water
Directions
- In a small saucepan, combine water, coarse chili, salt, and grated garlic and boil them over medium to high heat.
- Once boiling, reduce the heat to medium and add corn flour dissolved in water. Stir to mix.
- Add vinegar and cook for about 1 minute. Avoid inhaling the vinegar & chili fume as they can be toxic.
- Turn off the heat and leave it at room temperature to cool
- Once cool or lukewarm, add honey to the sauce and stir until mixed.
- For storage, transfer the sauce into a glass jar/bottle. For natural preservatives, add 1 medium-sized cinnamon stick and always keep it in the refrigerator.
Recipe Video
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