Without even exaggerating this spicy sweet chili sauce is truly irresistible. One sauce – under 10 minutes – use it on everything.
The heat in chili sauce is balanced with sweetness from sugar giving it a wonderful combination. A copycat recipe of the most popular Thai Chili Sauce.
All you need is very basic readily available pantry ingredients and 10 minute ( lesser) time to make homemade chili garlic sauce. When homemade sauce comes together so easy and fast there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try making your own chili sauce.
Like I always say homemade is always THE BEST. Homemade sauces are exactly that – THE BEST! It’ll cost you lesser when made at home , plus you have total control of how much you want to make depending on how much you’ll use.
What is Sweet Chili Sauce
Popular Thai dipping sauce that is great usually served with chicken, but pair’s great with prawns, fish; vegetables stir fry and many others.
The sauce is a wonderful combination of spicy, sweet, sour. You’ll find this chili sauce as one of the most popular dipping sauce served with so many dishes in Thai, Malaysia and many other countries.
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 Needed
7 simple pantry ingredients goes into making your own spicy and sweet chili sauce.
Chilies – Dried red chili flakes or Fresh Thai red chilies, loads of it. This is after all chili sauce, got to have chilies right!
Garlic – again loads of it. The best combination of garlic and chilies is what you get in this sauce.
Sugar – White sugar is great choice for the recipe. Feel free you use honey instead of sugar if you want to avoid refined 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 – Mainly added as thickening agent. Corn starch slurry is added in the last, after all ingredients are boiled together for couple of minutes.
How To Make Sweet Chili Sauce Recipe
As simple as sauce recipe can get, now you can easily make your own version of chili sauce. The best part of making homemade chili sauce… you have total control of everything you put in making the sauce.
If vinegar taste does not suit your palate, you can reduce the amount.
I like my sweet & chili sauce a little more to the spicier side, so this recipe makes slightly spicy sweet & chili sauce. Adjust chilies as per your spice level tolerance.
Also the type of chili you use to make this amazing dipping sauce will change the spiciness of the sauce. If you use red Jalapenos, the spice level would be less. If you use fresh Thai red chilies (Thai chilies are usually spicy) the sauce will turn out spicier compared to Jalapenos. Dried red chili flakes are spicy as well.
Note – Do try to keep the seeds from the chilies (if not all seeds, at least from few chilies). It makes the sauce look gorgeous with red chilies, seeds and garlic it also adds the required spiciness to the sauce.
So choose your peppers correctly depending on what you want your sauce to taste like.
To make your own 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 – Sauce thickens even more as it cools down.
You can store 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.
How To Use This Sauce?
We said you can use this Thai Sauce on almost everything. That’s right – everything!
Use it –
As marinade for seafood or meat – it goes great with shrimp and fish.
It’s a lip-smacking combination with chicken wings.
It’s popularly served with spring rolls as well.
Use it with stir fried vegetables.
Stir it with chowmein or noodles.
Whisk it with mayonnaise to make irresistible spicy sweet creamy appetizer dips.
Drizzle over cheese spread and us it to scoop out spread for chips.
Great dipping sauce for egg rolls.
Drizzle it over lettuce wraps.
I would even drizzle over soup!
And so many more other ways to use.
DON’T FORGET TO CHECK OUT OUR OTHER FAVORITE HOMEMADE SAUCE/DIPS RECIPES. THEY ARE TOO GOOD TO BE MISSED –
Homemade Schezwan Sauce
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Irresistible Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce
Ingredients
- ½ cup rice vinegar
- ½ cup water
- 1 cup white sugar
- 6 garlic pods minced
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce or gluten free tamari sauce
- 1 teaspoon fish sauce optional
- 4-6 teaspoon red chili flakes or 3 Thai birds eye chili peppers with seeds, chopped Or Thai sweet chili
- 3 teaspoon corn starch
- 2 tablespoon 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 – 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.
Danielle Wolter
i HAVE to make this! I just love a good sweet chili sauce and can’t believe ive never made my own. what awesome flavors, I can’t wait to try it!
jyothirajesh
Thank you Danielle, do try it, its amazing
Mahy Elamin
Mmm, I love sweet chili sauce at restaurants…. Thanks to this recipe I can make my own for a fraction of the cost and without any mysterious filler. Thanks for sharing.
Karyl Henry
I always have chili sauce in the fridge, but I normally just buy it. I love that you can make it at home, and that it’s so easy and I have all the ingredients in my pantry. Definitely making it fresh from now on
jyothirajesh
You’ll love the homemade version Karyl. It gives you total control of the flavors, taste and quantity you want to make
Marisa F. Stewart
There is nothing better than a good chili sauce for adding pizzazz to any dish. I love the combination of sweet and spicy – AND I do have a great fish sauce that would be perfect in the sauce. I’m now thinking of all the delicious ways I can use the sauce. Great recipe.
jyothirajesh
Thank you Marisa
Cheese Curd In Paradise
This recipe is so easy and filled with flavor. We love to make egg rolls at our house, and this sauce is always on the table with our fresh egg rolls!
jyothirajesh
Thank you
Kevin
Just made this per recipe, with a custom tweak. I halved the sugar, and doubled the birds eye chilis. Ran them and the garlic through a food processor before boiling. It turned out dynamite! Still sweet on the front end, and a solid burn on the back end. Looks store-bought. Thank you for the excellent base recipe!
Jyothi Rajesh
Glad to know you liked the recipe, thank you!
Melissa
What a deliciously easy sauce! It reminds me of the one that comes with our spring rolls when we order Thai food, I’ve always wanted to recreate it so I can’t wait to give it a try!
jyothirajesh
Thank you Melissa
April
I just love versatile recipes like this – I can use this sauce in so many ways and every time it will add incredible flavors and taste. Yummy!
jyothirajesh
Thank you April
Lyn
Thanks for sharing this recipe. Mine came out really dark, though. Not the clear pinkish color shown. What did I do wrong?
jyothirajesh
Red chili flakes that you used could be the culprit. Some of the red chili flakes aren’t reddish, they are more brownish which could have changed the color! I’m guessing that. Hope this helps
Karla Baker
What would be the proportion if you wanted to add mango to this mixture? I bought something similar in the store but it had mango and ginger and I can’t find it again. Would this recipe be able to accommodate those also? Thanks.
Jyothi Rajesh
It’s hard to give you any measurements or ideas here as I haven’t tried including mango and ginger in my sweet chili sauce. But I can direct you to another post for hot sauce recipe made of mango and habanero chilies (https://www.currytrail.in/mango-habanero-hot-sauce-recipe/).
Rochelle
Can’t wait to try it. I know I’ll love it in stir fry and going to try on fish tacos! And since I have faith in both of us, I know it will be gift worthy. Thanks and I’ll keep you posted.
Jyothi Rajesh
I’m so glad you loved the recipe
Darryl
Stunning beautifully balanced dipping sauce.
Jyothi Rajesh
So glad you loved the recipe Darryl. Thank you for sharing!
Cris
If I am to substitute honey for the white sugar what is the proportion, 1:1?
Jyothi Rajesh
I haven’t tested with honey, I guess 1:1 will work
JRiley
This was just delicious and so easy to make. My grandson is a wing aficionado. He came for wings a couple nights ago and I fixed both this sauce and his usual favorite Buffalo sauce. He told me he actually likes this sweet chili better. I believe him – we had Buffalo left over but none of this one!!! Thanks so much for sharing.
Jyothi Rajesh
Thanks so much. So glad you and your grandson loved the sauce!
Dolores Cannon
This is awesome, Won’t be buying sweet hot sauces any more. Had family try it, they
all liked it ,they asked for the recipe. I will try the rest of the recipe sauces also.Thank you.
jyothirajesh
I’m so glad you tried and liked the recipe. I’m sure you’ll love other sauces as well. Do try it