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Home > Condiments, Sauces & Seasonings > Irresistible Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce
15 minutes minutes

Irresistible Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce

Published: Aug 15, 2024

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sweet chili sauce in a glass jar.

Spicy sweet chili sauce has spicy, sour, sweet, and umami flavors. This Asian condiment is super easy to make from scratch and tastes better than bottled stuff. A great condiment for dipping spring rolls, potstickers, shrimp, or southern fried chicken.

homemade spicy sweet chili sauce in 3 glass containers.
Jump to:
  • Ingredients
  • Variations
  • Step-by-step Instructions
  • Best Tips
  • Serving suggestions
  • Storage
  • Other Asian Sauce
  • 📋Irresistible Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce

All you need is readily available pantry ingredients and 10 minutes to make homemade chili garlic sauce.

Homemade is always the best. It’ll cost less when made at home, plus you have total control over the flavors you want to enhance and the quantity to make depending on the usage.

This Thai-style dipping sauce is best served with southern fried chicken, fried coconut shrimp, drizzled over pineapple fried rice, and more.

This Asian sweet chili garlic sauce is commonly made of peppers (fresh Thai chilies or red jalapenos or dried red chili flakes), sugar, salt, garlic, and rice vinegar thickened with slurry.

Ingredients

  • Chilies – Dried red chili flakes or Fresh Thai red chilies can be used.
  • Garlic – loads of it.
  • Sugar – White granular sugar is best. Feel free you use honey instead of sugar.
  • Rice Wine Vinegar – or any white vinegar would work.
  • Soy sauce – To keep it healthier use low sodium light soy sauce.
  • Fish Sauce – optional, can be added for packing in more flavors.
  • Corn Starch – thickening agent. Corn starch slurry is added in the last.

Variations

You can add fresh grated ginger to the sauce. Cook it along with minced garlic.

Red chili flakes are best. You can also use fresh Thai red chilies (you might have to reduce the amount as Thai chilies are spicier), or use red fresno chilies for mild heat. So choose your peppers correctly depending on what you want your sauce to taste like.

I like my sweet & chili sauce a little more to the spicier side. Adjust chilies as per your spice level tolerance.

The type of chili you use will alter the spice levels of the sauce.

Note – Do try to keep the seeds from few chilies (if not all seeds, at least from few chilies).The sauce needs a level of heat in it.

Step-by-step Instructions

cooking homemade spicy sweet chili sauce in a pan.

Step 1: Except cornstarch slurry add all ingredients into a saucepan.

cooking homemade spicy sweet chili sauce in a pan.

Step 2: Bring it to a boil. Reduce heat to low and boil for 3 to 5 minutes. Stir frequently.

cooking homemade spicy sweet chili sauce in a pan.

Step 3: Whisk corn starch in water until no lumps are seen. Slowly pour corn starch slurry while constantly stirring. Let it boil for 5 minutes more on low heat and keep stirring regularly.

homemade spicy sweet chili sauce in a pan.

Step 4: Once the sauce reaches it’s desired thick consistency, turn off flame and let it cool completely before you transfer to air tight containers.

Note – Sauce thickens even more as it cools down.

You can store chili sauce in air-tight glass jars in refrigerator for a month. Make sure you use clean dry spoon every time you use the sauce.

Best Tips

  1. You can add fresh grated ginger to the sauce. Cook it along with minced garlic.
  2. The spiciness of this sauce depends on the variety of dried chilies that you use. If using Thai bird eye chili, handle them with caution as it is hot.
  3. The sauce can be used in stir-fry recipes, can be used as a dipping sauce for dumplings, spring rolls, and baked potato wedges, or drizzled over soups, and salads.

Serving suggestions

  1. You can use it as a marinade for seafood or meat – it goes great with shrimp and fish.
  2. It’s a lip-smacking combination with instant pot chicken wings.
  3. It’s popularly served with spring rolls or fried shrimp.
  4. Use it with stir-fried vegetables.
  5. Stir it with chowmein or noodles.
  6. Whisk it with mayonnaise to make irresistible spicy sweet creamy appetizer dips.
  7. Drizzle over cheese spread and us it to scoop out spread for chips.
  8. Drizzle it over lettuce wraps.
  9. I would even drizzle over soup!

Storage

Allow the sauce to cool completely. Transfer to a clean, dry air-tight container and store it in the fridge for up to 1 month.

homemade spicy sweet chili sauce in glass bottle.

Other Asian Sauce

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    General Tso Sauce

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    Epic All Purpose Peanut Sauce

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homemade spicy sweet chili sauce in 3 glass containers
5 from 15 votes

📋Irresistible Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce

Jyothi Rajesh
Spicy sweet chili sauce has spicy, sour, sweet, and umami flavors. This Asian condiment is super easy to make from scratch and tastes better than bottled stuff. A great condiment for dipping spring rolls, potstickers, shrimp, or fried chicken.
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Prep Time 5 minutes mins
Cook Time 10 minutes mins
Total Time 15 minutes mins
Course condiments, Sauces
Cuisine Asian
Servings 2 cups
Calories 441

Ingredients
  

  • ½ cup rice vinegar
  • ½ cup water
  • 1 cup white granuler sugar
  • 6 cloves garlic minced
  • 1 tablespoon light soy sauce or gluten free tamari sauce
  • 1 teaspoon fish sauce optional
  • 6 teaspoons red chili flakes or 3 Thai birds eye chili peppers with seeds
  • 2 teaspoons corn starch
  • 2 tablespoons water

Instructions
 

  • To make your own sweet chili sauce, simply add in all ingredients except corn starch slurry into a sauce pan. Bring it to boil. Let everything boil for 3 to 5 minutes slow and steady.
  • Then reduce flame to low, slowly add corn starch slurry (corn starch whisked with water) with constant stirring. Let it boil for 5 minutes more on very low flame and keep stirring regularly.
  • Once sauce reaches it’s desired thick consistency, turn off flame and let it cool completely before you transfer to air tight containers.
  • Note: The sauce thickens as it cools down.
  • You can store sweet chili sauce in air tight bottles or glass jars in refrigerator for many months. Make sure you use clean dry spoon every time you open the bottle to use the sauce.

Video

Notes

    1. You can add fresh grated ginger to the sauce. Cook it along with minced garlic.
    2. The spiciness of this sauce depends on the variety of dried chilies that you use. If using Thai bird’s eye chili, handle them with caution as it is hot.
    3. The sauce can be used in stir-fry recipes, can be used as a dipping sauce for dumplings, spring rolls, and wedges, or drizzled over soups, and salads.
  1.  
Nutritional Info – Please remember that the nutritional information provided is only a rough estimate and can vary greatly based on the products used.

Nutrition

Calories: 441kcalCarbohydrates: 108gProtein: 2gFat: 0gSaturated Fat: 0gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 811mgPotassium: 133mgFiber: 1gSugar: 100gVitamin A: 1185IUVitamin C: 2.8mgCalcium: 30mgIron: 1.1mg
Did you make this recipe?Follow @CurryTrail and tag #CurryTrail to share your creation!

Created by Jyothi Rajesh

Thank you for stopping by.

I’m Jyothi Rajesh (Jo for short) and i’m the founder of the food blog, Curry Trail where I share my culinary Adventures. I live in Bangalore, India. I’m a mom of two beautiful kids. My passion is creating and sharing delicious and easy recipes for the home cook. I have been blogging since 2014 and many of my recipes have appeared in both online and print publications over the years. Learn more about Jyothi Rajesh.

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    5 from 15 votes (1 rating without comment)

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    Comments & Reviews

  1. Maddiecat says

    December 03, 2023 at 6:36 pm

    Are garlic pods single cloves please?

    Reply
    • Jyothi Rajesh says

      December 03, 2023 at 8:17 pm

      Yes it’s 6 cloves garlic

      Reply
  2. Andrew says

    August 25, 2023 at 1:24 am

    5 stars
    Found this recipe on Pinterest and I gave it a go. Yooo!!! It’s so good. Spicy for me but y’know I don’t plan on drinking it. I used it as a marinade last night on chicken and yeah……it caramelizes the outside but the flavor doesn’t cook away. Even used some as a sauce for the side and it was perfect on rice. Now I’ve got a jar of perfect chili sauce for my Asian flavored dishes sitting homemade in my fridge. So awesome. A++++

    Reply
    • Jyothi Rajesh says

      August 27, 2023 at 8:11 pm

      Thank you so much Andrew for sharing your feedback!

      Reply
  3. Patricia Sofia says

    March 17, 2023 at 10:18 pm

    I’ve used this recipe over and over ever since finding it last summer! Thank you so much for sharing. I made it with the fresh habaneros and scotch bonnet peppers from my garden. It turned out wonderful. Do you think I could make large batches and can it? Thanks again for the recipe

    Reply
    • Jyothi Rajesh says

      March 21, 2023 at 7:14 pm

      So glad to hear you loved the recipe, thank you! I haven’t tested canning it, but i’m guessing you can can this sauce.

      Reply
  4. Hanouda says

    October 16, 2022 at 6:15 am

    5 stars
    Amazing sauce! I made it with fresh habeneros from my gardening was amazing! Thank you

    Reply
    • Jyothi Rajesh says

      October 18, 2022 at 8:13 pm

      Yay, so excited to hear you tried this recipe! How great are home grown peppers and i’m sure the sauce would be so amazing with fresh home grown peppers from your own garden!

      Reply
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Jyothi - Author of Curry Trail.

Welcome, I'm Jyothi

My food philosophy is simple, fresh and full of flavors! I love ‘spicy’ food. In fact so much so that I can skip dessert for extra spicy savory food!

More About Me
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