Sweet Chili Sauce – A Beautiful Mess

While there is nothing wrong with buying a jar of sweet chili sauce at the store, what you might not know is you probably already have all the ingredients to make it. With only a handful of ingredients, this sauce recipe only takes minutes to make and you can customize it to your preferences of how sweet or spicy you like it!

Sweet chili sauce is great as a dipping sauce for things like egg rolls or crab rangoon, but I also will sometimes mix it into stir fry or other recipes (like these Thai lettuce wraps) for added flavor.

Related: Next up, learn to make your own hoisin sauce, sweet and sour sauce or stir fry sauce.

Ingredients

• Water
• Rice vinegar
• Granulated white sugar
• Ground ginger
• Garlic powder
• Ketchup
• Chili garlic sauce (sambal oelek)
• Cornstarch

This sauce will be a light red/orange color on its own, but if you want to color it more, feel free to add a drop or two of red food coloring.

Directions

In a small to medium pot, add the water, vinegar, sugar, ginger, garlic, ketchup and chili paste. Whisk over medium to high heat until the sugar has fully dissolved.

In a small cup or bowl, whisk together the cornstarch and water into a slurry. Pour this into the pot and continue to cook until the sauce begins to thicken and coats the spoon.

Remove from heat. The sauce will thicken more as it cools.

Tips for Making

• Store sauce in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to at least two weeks.
• If you’d like to use fresh ginger and garlic, you can; simply finely mince before adding to the pot.
• Taste the sauce when done and feel free to add more chili garlic sauce or some additional red pepper flakes for more heat.

Homemade Sauce Recipes