Best Garlic Chili Hot Sauce
This is the best hot sauce recipe with garlic that’s easy to make and perfect for spicy food lovers. You can customize this chili garlic hot sauce to your personal liking. 
Best Hot Sauce Recipe
We’ve been quite unconventional over the last few years when it comes to gift giving. When the holidays roll around, tis the season to fire up the ovens and gift out baked goods and sweets till everyone can’t eat another cookie. Granted, we have our traditional fudge that we’ll make for family who are out of state, but fudge is really the only sweet gift we pass on with a red bow attached.
Gifts of Hot Sauce
Our more unconventional holiday gift is giving our homemade sriracha hot sauce and kim chi. Chili and spice is everything nice for all our food friends. They always welcome our little spice packed jars with open arms and we’re always thrilled to be the different kids on the block, passing out something other than sweets. This year, we decided to make an extra garlicky chili hot sauce because we have a small contingent of food friends who crave flavor, heat and spice more than we do. And that’s saying alot! It’s the easiest and best hot sauce recipe ever.
UN-BLENDED: for a rougher chili texture with more bite, don’t blend the sauce
Easy Chili Garlic Hot Sauce Recipe
Seasonally, making our chili hot sauces is always on perfect timing. During the end of fall, our chilies are all ripe and poised to be stewed with a whole lot of garlic. It’s an exciting season to be harvesting fresh chilies and canning them for the holiday gift giving season.
Homemade chili garlic hot sauce is always so wonderful because the bright, fresh pop of spice can’t be duplicated from a store bought bottle. Once you make your own garlic chili hot sauce at home, it’s an addicting habit that’s hard to give up. The vibrant, off-the-vine taste is undeniably terrific.
SMOOTH TEXTURE: after the blender for smother texture
This best hot sauce recipe is adapted from our previous homemade sriracha hot sauce recipe. All we did was add more fried garlic to take the flavor level up 5 knotches. But if you’re a garlic fiend and want to add more pop to the hot sauce, just add as much garlic as you want to handle.
We went a little overboard and made it a little TOO SPICY. Whew! It did hurt a bit, but the burn was good. You can adapt it to your spice tolerance level!
– Diane and Todd
generous amounts of fragrant garlic
voila! the best hot sauce recipe. can you feel the burn?
More Asian Recipes:
- Here’s my personal recipe for Vietnamese Fish Sauce Dip
- click here for all our popular Vietnamese Recipes that are sometimes traditional and definitely sometimes not.
- Different chili varieties
Garlic Chili Hot Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 cup chopped Chili Peppers (about 100 grams). *for a more mild hot sauce, start with less chilies
- 3 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
- 2 heads Garlic (crushed or minced)
- 3 Shallots , medium size (minced)
- 15 ounces Tomato Sauce
- 1/4 cup Rice Vinegar
- 3 Tablespoons Sugar
- 1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce (this is a vital ingredient for wonderful flavor, please don't skip it)
Instructions
- Rinse, clean and remove stems of the chiles. Blot dry with paper towel.
- Wearing rubber gloves, mince chili peppers. The smaller the cut, the smoother your final sauce will be. Or you can just leave them minced small for a more spicy bite and bigger texture.
- In medium sauce pan, heat oil then add minced garlic and shallots. Over medium heat saute garlic and shallots for a about 1 minute or until light brown and fragrant. Fry the garlic and shallots enough so that they become crispy, but not burnt. (don’t burn your garlic!)
- Add tomato sauce and minced chili peppers. Let the sauce come to a simmer then lower heat to keep at a low simmer. Add fish sauce, vinegar, and sugar. Mix well.
- Continue simmering the garlic hot sauce for about 5 minutes. This will break down the chili peppers and soften them to create the smooth consistency.Remove hot sauce from heat and allow to cool completely.
- Transfer hot sauce sauce to blender and blend until smooth or until most of the chili pepper skin and seeds break down- preferably on the “liquefy” mode.Taste the hot sauce to further customize the hot sauce to your liking.
- Add more sugar, vinegar or water. Blend one last time till smooth. Pour into clean, air tight jar and refrigerate and use within about 1 week. Or pour into sterilized jars and use safe canning techniques to store for longer.
This looks perfect for the thoughtful homemade gift I have yet to make. Wondering if you think it will last longer than a week. I cant imagine anyone using the entire gift amount in a week and think it might just be OK for a bit longer. What do you think? Hope you enjoy your 3 week Christmas adventure.
Kelli- as long as your jars are sterilized and clean, the hot sauce should certainly last for over a week.
I would take any gift coming from your kitchen. Love the shots. Take care 🙂
My kids love hot sauce and this looks and sounds absolutely fabulous! What a great gift idea.
Have you ever used sriracha in a Bloody Mary? I got the idea stuck in my head, and I think it could be delicious, but I can’t seem to be able to make it work. Then I realized that if there was anyone who could figure out a way to make a Sriracha Bloody Mary it would be you two.
We have. We actually posted about it earlier this year: Sriracha Bloody Mary. We loved it!
I must have read it on here and spaced on it since Bloody Mary’s weren’t something I drank up until a month ago. But I was right, you two would have a recipe for it.
Love the photography…and the hot sauce!
Do you mean tomato sauce like ketchup? I’m in NZ and not quite sure what’s required and I want to make this asap.
Sasa- Tomato sauce in the can we used is labeled as “tomato sauce”. It’s not ketchup, it is basically cooked and pureed tomatoes. Ketchup will have vinegar and other ingredients added. Although, you might be able to use ketchup and make a spicy ketchup sauce!
Thanks! I guess I will use passata.
Guys, my taste buds can’t wait to try this sauce and if mine turns out too hot like yours….. well there’s always a cold beer ( or two ) in the fridge!
Stunning photos, as usual .
Dario
dario- thank you and make that 4 beers for our version!
I always love your photos, but these are particularly stunning. Since I live in Fairbanks, Alaska I will need to save this recipe for next fall. I always grow chilies in our greenhouse because they look so pretty. Each fall I harvest basketloads and am never sure what to do with them all. I planted garlic for the first time this past fall. This is something to look forward to for sure.
Happy Holidays to you both!!! I love that you give away the hot stuff as gifts. I have seen sooo many sweets lately that I have gained weight just by looking at them! I would much prefer getting spicy or savory condiment. I always say, the hotter the better! Just add more food. 🙂
What a unique idea for holiday gifts (vs. the usual sweet suspects). Did you grow your own peppers, garlic, and tomatoes for this recipe too? I planted garlic this year, but tomatoes and peppers are a no-go in my foggy San Francisco backyard.
I love fish sauce and have been using it a lot lately — my latest favorite is Brussels sprouts parboiled then pan-roasted with bacon and a splash of fish sauce, honey, and black pepper.
Although we have most everything growing (or canned from the summer) for the recipe, the ingredients from this batch came primarily from the farmers market. One of the Asian greens vendors had cut back his chilis and was selling huge bunches for $4. Two of those made up over a gallon of sauce. We didn’t want to waste our home grown tomato sauce, so we ended up using a leftover can in the pantry
Your Brussels sprouts sound divine!
Now that is something I would like to have when it is cold. Sriracha is always on our shelf, the only fav. hot sauce. I am sure gonna make this one, but without the Fish Sauce. LOVE that red on gray!!!
Finger licking good, and sensational. I ♥ your pictures. Have a delicious holiday season!
The color of the hot sauce is stunning! By the time Christmas rolls around, I am bursting with sweets and looking for a little savory something to save the day. I would be thrilled if someone arrived at my doorstep with a bottle of this sauce.
Hi, Guys,
What a great post and a great idea!
I certainly don’t have a garden to compare with yours (sigh), but I do put up tomatoes. I had already planned to grow lots of garlic next summer because the garlic from my local farmstand blew the stuff in the supermarket far away. So I will add chilies and have the stuff to make this next holiday season.
Merry Christmas to you and everyone.
Yum. We have a hot sauce addiction over here, and Ole is always on the lookout for new ones to try. I can only imagine this will be on his “must make” list soon. And I say the more untraditional the gift the better, if untraditional is hot sauce and kim chi.
Diane and Todd, first of all Merry Christmas. After all, this is in this spirit that you present this recipe. Since I adore your images, like always, I’ll try not to mention them in this comment. I’ll only say that they’re brilliant, and absolutely mouth watering, and artistically sophisticated, and rustic plenty to address the nature of the food you present, and on and on and on, because, as you might have already picked up on it, I love how you present your fare.
Now, about the recipe. We’ll be leaving the home for three weeks for Christmas come this Friday. Just today, I’ve spotted the basket of fresh Thai chilies I picked up at the local Chinese market. I haven’t had a chance to use them all, but your recipe comes so appropriately handy. I’ll make the sauce tomorrow and gift with it the people around, at least those who say they’ll miss us at Christmas. I’m positive they’ll remember us after this gift – it’s gonna be hot, I’ve got plenty of the chilies to use.
Gosia- Glad the timing was right with your local chili find and this recipe. Hope it turned out well!