Chili garlic oil enhances every meal with a fiery punch, but store-bought sauces can be a gamble—you won’t know how spicy they are until it’s too late. Skip the guesswork and make it at home.
Homemade chili garlic sauce allows you to customize the flavors to your preference. Dial up the heat, tone it down, or tweak the garlic and seasonings as you like to create the perfect spicy drizzle for any dish.
How is chili garlic sauce made?
Homemade chili garlic sauce starts with fresh chilies ground in a food processor, blender, or a mortar and pestle. The ground chilies are added to hot oil with spices—we used cinnamon, star anise, and bay leaves—to cook until aromatic. Minced garlic comes in last to gently fry in the oil until golden brown. Finally, seasonings like soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sugar add umami, tang, and brightness to your taste.
Why does this chili garlic oil have spices?
Spices add warm, complex flavors to your chili garlic sauce without piling on extra heat. First, we used Chinese five-spice powder: a blend of cinnamon, cloves, fennel seeds, star anise, and Sichuan peppercorns, and a cornerstone of dishes like lu rou fan (Taiwanese braised pork bowl) and Filipino-Chinese classics like pares and kikiam.
Frying spices in hot oil unlocks their true potential, extracting more potent flavors. This process is called blooming. To push it even further, we bloom the five spice powder in oil pre-infused with star anise and whole cinnamon sticks. If you want a numbing, mala hotpot-style spice, throw in a handful of Sichuan peppercorns with those whole spices.
Ingredients
Ingredients
- ½ cup fresh red chilies
- ¾–1 cup neutral oil
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 2 star anise
- 1 bay leaf
- ½ cup minced garlic
- 2 tsp red chili flakes
- 1–2 tsp sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp Chinese five-spice powder
- ½ tsp soy sauce
- ¼ tsp rice wine vinegar
Prepare chilies: Blend red chilies in a food processor or blender until broken down into fine chunks. If you don’t have a food processor, chop chilies with a knife into small pieces. Transfer to a mortar and pestle and pound until crushed finely. Set aside.
Cook spices: Add neutral oil, cinnamon sticks, star anise, and bay leaf to a saucepot over medium-low heat. Stir spices until fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Reduce heat to low then add chilies. Be careful with this step as the oil might overflow.
Add minced garlic, stirring continuously for 1 minute. Add chili flakes, sugar, salt, and Chinese five-spice powder. Keep stirring until garlic is golden brown. Mix in soy sauce and rice wine vinegar.
Finish sauce: Remove sauce from heat and let cool. Adjust seasoning to taste with more soy sauce, sugar, or rice wine vinegar to your liking.
Transfer chili garlic sauce to a jar or container with a tight-fitting lid. Store and keep chilled in the fridge for up to 2 months.
