Chilli Mama's Szechuan Kitchen

Sichuan-style dumpling sauce is easy to make with a high quality chilli oil — like the handmade chilli oil that we produce at Chilli Mama’s. To whip up a quick chilli sauce, remember the five elements: spicy, salty, sour, sweet, and special.

Recipe:

1 Tbsp Chilli Mama’s Szechuan Chilli Oil (spicy)

2 tsp light soy sauce (salty)

1/2 tsp black vinegar (sour)*

1/2 tsp sugar (sweet)

Any herbs or something special you want to add, like minced garlic, green onions, or sesame paste (1 tsp).

*We like to use Chin Kiang vinegar, but you can substitute another vinegar if you don’t have black vinegar.

Mix the sauce and then add whatever you think it needs. We seldom really measure the proportions, so the measures you are getting are rough proportion. Some days, we feel like more chilli.

The key to the sauce is to get it nice and balanced; the sour, salt, and sweet really make the chilli flavour in our oil pop! But if you are eating something that’s already salty, for example, like putting sauce on a roast chicken, you don’t need so much soy sauce because the food is already salty.

Chef Lulu likes to add minced garlic and slivered green onion (shallots) to her dipping sauce. She tries to pick out the thinner, younger bunches of green onions rather than the fatter, older ones, and then uses the green parts cut thin for her sauce.

Assistant noodle monkey Greg likes to thicken his chilli dumpling sauce with peanut butter or sesame paste (even tahini in a pinch) so that it sticks to the dumplings better. This variant gives it a bit of Thai flavour (but it’s still very Sichuan).

We like a chilli oil-based dumpling sauce better than one with fresh chillis because fresh chilli is always a bit of a gamble: you never know if you’re going to get a dud chilli or one hot enough to melt the enamel on your teeth.