Home made hot chili oil recipe

[hzrt8w]

Any chili hot sauce lover out there?

I love hot sauce of all kinds, and I have tried many of them (especially Asian styles). I found that Tobasco (and all its imitators) is a bit too sour to my liking. I tried using Chinese chili bean sauce as a condiment, and it is overly salty. Tried the Guilin chili sauce. It tastes good but again too salty as a condiment. Tried Sambal Oelek... like Tobasco, too much vinegar in it. I like some of the sweet hot sauce paste, but only use it with Cheung Fun. I found many other Vietnamnese hot sauces, like Sambal Oelek, to be too sour for my taste (but they sure are hot, which I like).

From all the hot sauces that I have tried, I found one that is on the top of my taste test:

Yank Sing Chili Pepper Sauce and

Yank Sing XO Chili Pepper Sauce

I knew their hot sauce from more than 20 years ago when they were just a small neighborhood restaurant at Boardway and Stockton in San Francisco. (Now they are a big corporation) I believe they used to (maybe still do) serve their own chili sauce (for free) to their customers. I used to walk in to their restaurant just to buy a jar of their hot sauce. The demand for their chili sauce has been so great that they expanded their business and nowadays you can find their hot sauce in most Asian grocery markets.

It seems to achieve a perfect balance of taste and heat. It doesn't have a trace of vinegar that I can taste. I tried to reverse engineer their hot sauce but to date do not have any success. Through my trials, I have developed my own chili sauce recipe which I like, though it's far from Yank Sing's. But their hot sauce is priced at US $3.95 for a 6 oz jar, it's a pricy taste to have. (XO sauce is priced at close to US $6.00 per 6 oz).

Here is my home-made chili pepper oil recipe for anyone who is interested:

CHILI PEPPER SAUCE

(Ingredients will yield 2 to 3 large jam jars)

- 7-8 cup of cooking oil

- 1 pack of dried hot pepper flakes (about 1 to 1.5 lb)

- 15 to 20 whole garlic

- 2 cup of fermented black beans (rinsed and smashed)

- 2 cup of preserved radish

- 3/4 cup of hoisin sauce

- 1 cup of sa cha sauce (basically minced dried shrimp)

- 20 tsp of cayenne pepper powder

- 5 tsp of ground white pepper

- 5 tsp of sugar

- 5 tsp of white vinegar

- 5 tsp of five spice powder

- 10 tsp of salt

1. Separate and peel all the garlic. Use a food processor, chop the garlic to fine fragments.

2. Use the food processor to grind the preserved radish to fine fragments.

3. Use a wok/pan, heat up the cooking oil (maybe 10 minutes). Add chopped garlic, cook until brown (5 minutes or more). Add preserved radish, pepper flakes, black beans, hoisin sauce, sa cha sauce, cayenne pepper powder, white pepper, sugar, vinegar, five spice powder and salt. Cook another 10 minutes or so, keep stirring.

Notes:

1. The chili hot oil should be kept in the refrigerator.

2. Optionally you may add dried scallop to the chili oil (XO sauce). Soak the dried scallop in water overnight, then use the food processor to mince the scallop before putting in the hot chili oil.

3. Optionally you may add dried shrimp to the chili oil (imitation XO sauce). Soak the dried shrimp in water for 30 minutes, then use the food processor to mince the dried shrimp before putting in the hot chili oil.

4. Optionally you may use fresh red chilis, finely chopped, to add more heat to the chili oil.

[edited to rename it Chili Pepper Sauce from Chili Pepper Oil]

Edited July 15, 2004 by hzrt8w (log)

[agbaber]

Is the final result an oil or a paste?

Everything but the beans tells me its an oil, but I just can't picture it. Can you provide any shots?

[hzrt8w]

Is the final result an oil or a paste?

It is more of a paste. You can use more oil if you like.

[Gary Soup]

A bit off topic, but today's San Francisco Chronicle has a feature on Nam Prik, Thai Chili Sauce, by my favorite food writer, Olivia Wu. It includes some recipes for preparation and use.

Nam Prik

[dmreed]

back in the 1960s, I used a recipe to make hot chili oil. I remember that the Szechuan pepper corns were roasted in salt in the wok and then the pepper corns and salt were disolved in oil. I remember that the oil did not taste salty! I cannot find the recipe...can anyone provide such a recipe or a reference to it?

[dockhl]

back in the 1960s, I used a recipe to make hot chili oil. I remember that the Szechuan pepper corns were roasted in salt in the wok and then the pepper corns and salt were disolved in oil. I remember that the oil did not taste salty! I cannot find the recipe...can anyone provide such a recipe or a reference to it?

←

Me, too ! And I've not made hot chili oil for years. Wonder why I stopped? I think i used chili flakes, salt, Szechuan peppers and poured sizzling hot oil over them.

[rooftop1000]

back in the 1960s, I used a recipe to make hot chili oil. I remember that the Szechuan pepper corns were roasted in salt in the wok and then the pepper corns and salt were disolved in oil. I remember that the oil did not taste salty! I cannot find the recipe...can anyone provide such a recipe or a reference to it?

←

Me, too ! And I've not made hot chili oil for years. Wonder why I stopped? I think i used chili flakes, salt, Szechuan peppers and poured sizzling hot oil over them.

←

Maybe because you couldn't get Szechuan peppercorns for a while?

Tracey

[dockhl]

Good thought!

[dmreed]

Unfortunately, I still have not found that original recipe which roasted the Sichuan peppercorns in salt and then added the oil and heated them. I have made chili oil lately several times with regular dried red chilis and roasted Sichuan peppercorns...I use much more chilis and peppercorns than most recipes because I like the heat...I leave the chilis and peppercorns in the bottles with the oil.

If anyone has a reference to the original recipe, it would be greatly appreciated.

[dmreed]

Unfortunately, I still have not found that original recipe which roasted the Sichuan peppercorns in salt and then added the oil and heated them. I have made chili oil lately several times with regular dried red chilis and roasted Sichuan peppercorns...I use much more chilis and peppercorns than most recipes because I like the heat...I leave the chilis and peppercorns in the bottles with the oil.

If anyone has a reference to the original recipe, it would be greatly appreciated.

←

I recently got a sample of a semi-dried Ghost Chili (also know as Naga Jolokia and Bhut Jolokia) which currently holds the world's record for Scoville units...over 1 million units...more than 4 times the heat of the Habanero and twice that of the Red Sevina Habanero! I cut off a piece about the size of a large pin head and put it on my tongue without chewing and I had to spit it out after about 5-10 seconds...it was that HOT!

if the seeds from the Ghost Chili grow and produce peppers, I will make chili oil with the Ghost Chili and Sichuan peppercorn!

[Chris Amirault]

Bumping this up a bit. I had gotten a few Sichuan chili oil/goop jars that I really liked, and then the store lost their distributor. So I got out my trusty old China Moon cookbook and made Tropp's chili orange oil with a few modifications, including using two kinds of chilis, some sesame seeds, a lot of garlic that I let brown in the oil, black beans, peanut oil, and, yes, some orange zest. It's excellent and I can't really understand why I forgot that it's so easy....

[dmreed]

Unfortunately, I still have not found that original recipe which roasted the Sichuan peppercorns in salt and then added the oil and heated them. I have made chili oil lately several times with regular dried red chilis and roasted Sichuan peppercorns...I use much more chilis and peppercorns than most recipes because I like the heat...I leave the chilis and peppercorns in the bottles with the oil.

If anyone has a reference to the original recipe, it would be greatly appreciated.

←

I recently got a sample of a semi-dried Ghost Chili (also know as Naga Jolokia and Bhut Jolokia) which currently holds the world's record for Scoville units...over 1 million units...more than 4 times the heat of the Habanero and twice that of the Red Sevina Habanero! I cut off a piece about the size of a large pin head and put it on my tongue without chewing and I had to spit it out after about 5-10 seconds...it was that HOT!

if the seeds from the Ghost Chili grow and produce peppers, I will make chili oil with the Ghost Chili and Sichuan peppercorn!

just an update:

I bought a pound of the Ghost Chilis and have made chili oil using about a quart of canola oil heated until almost smoking and then cooled for a couple of minutes and then I added a couple of handsful of dried Ghost Chilis, a handful of dried Chilis Japones, and 1/2 cup Sichuan peppercorns (obviously not really pepper). I then strained the oil through a colander which allowed some chili sediment to pass through. Then I put the chili oil into empty bottles and added a few larger pieces of chilis and then screwed on the bottle tops. It is indeed more picante than any chili oils I had bought or made before with a nice reddish color and it has a very nice flavor as well.

I will try again to grow some Ghost Chilis this year!