11 minutes

Irresistible Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce

Name: Irresistible Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce
Prep time: 3 min
Cook time: 8 min
Total time: 11 min
Ingredients: 1/2 cup rice vinegar; 1/2 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

Last updated February 6, 2021. Originally posted March 8, 2019 By Jyothi Rajesh 35 Comments

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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

1 Minute Bang Bang Sauce

Mango Habanero Hot Sauce

Chimichurri Sauce

Boom Boom Sauce

Instant Pot Cranberry Sauce

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