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.
Threw all the chilis, shallots and garlic in the food processor – this stuff is a-ma-zing… That steak sause idea sounds awesome too!
I put allsorts of substitutes in mine, i used tomato ketchup so I didnt add any sugar just a little salt , i used 12 smallish red chillis and 8 smallish green ones, also threw 2 jalapenos and a green scotch bonnet ( they werent quite ripe), I used red onions and white onions instead of shallots and instead of fish or soy sauce i used bbq sauce added a lot more sunflower oil , just wondering why its not tasting very hot , im thinking the whole head of garlic a bit too much for me too .Overall a very nice sauce for my 1st attempt, all my chilis are homegrown , h i also threw in a rather larger red cayenne too ๐ can really taste that.
Hi. Did you add in the seeds? I looked up how to mince chillis and it says to remove seeds, but that’s the hot part!
Ok homi’s I made this and it was the bomb shiz. Take 2 3T of the chilli mix and add 1T sour cream for a bammmm steak sauce
This was great! Used it in a sesame noodle recipe. We used dried chili peppers (deseeded and deribbed first) and rehydrated them. We ended up using a Tbsp. of the chili soaking water instead of the fish sauce (because vegan) and it was great (did add a little more spice to it though:) Have no idea if right for others. Thanks!
Hi! I have a question about the fish sauce, you say not to skip it which I completely understand for the flavour balance, however as a vegetarian I obviously don’t use it. What would you suggest as a substitute? I have no clue what it tastes like actually, but my instincts tell me that maybe a mix of vegan Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce might work, what do you think?
Hi Rebekkah,
Soy sauce will work fine for a substitute or if you feel like being experimental your guess of vegan Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce is great too. We’ll often use soy sauce as a fish sauce sub for this (and many other recipes) when making it for vegetarians.
Thanks!
T & D
I have lots of peppers and can almost everything else from my garden. Your recipe sounds perfect. Would it hold up to a hot water bath for 10 – 20 minutes?
That’s how we usually will seal our jars… in a water bath for 15 minutes. Hope you love it.
What do you mean by c? And T? And what is a head of garlic?
C is for cup, T is for tablespoon (if you ever see a lowercase t that is for teaspoon). In regards to garlic, a clove is the individual piece of garlic you break off, the head is the whole bulb. These terms will apply universally to recipes so it will be handy to remember if you browse other’s recipes too.
One thing to note re T. The size of a tablespoon varies depending on country. For some (like the U.S.) 1T = 3t. For others (like Australia) 1T = 4t.
I just made this, and it turned out great! I used a bunch of assorted hot peppers from the greenmarket – I just asked the farmer to give me a good variety of the most flavorful ones he had. I froze most of it, though.
follow up Q… I don’t think I could use all that in a week. So do I think I could freeze some of it?
this sounds like something I would LOVE. I love garlic and spice. I’ll have to pick up some chili’s and give this a try.
A nice variation is to add fresh rich tomatoโs and red and green capsicums (sweet taste) from ย the garden. I make 1/2 mine as a salsa then blend the other 1/2 into a sauce consistency.ย
Wow, that’s a great recipe, and I love your pictures.
I bet you have people flocking to be on your gift list with gifts like this!
I love the darker mood of your photos lately. Really beautiful!
Happy holidays!
Would love to try this recipe. I have one question though. When you say chili peppers, which pepper would work best……Cayenne, Thai, Habanero? Love your blog. Thanks.
That is the great thing, it will vary so much depending on the chili pepper, make it with your favorite. Cayenne may be a bit grassy and harsh, but the Thais and Habaneros both would be excellent, but each giving a different flavor. We have a harvest of habaneros waiting to be cooked into the next batch and this one was made with a Thai-like chili.
You had me at “Sriracha” ๐
Beautiful sambal! With garlic and chili, I can finish the whole rice in my rice cooker!