Sweet & Spicy Thai Chili Sauce

New photos added 11-3-21. 

 

 

There are some very good commercial brands of Thai chili sauce on the market, but for those who like to try making their own food products, here is a good recipe. Of course, with products you make for yourself, you get to control the ingredients. This sauce is great for dipping or for fixing chicken wings, as well as for other recipes. Thai food can have some "heat" from chili peppers, and you can add more chili pepper to this sauce for more "kick." 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon minced red chili peppers
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon ketchup
4 teaspoons cornstarch + 3 tablespoons cold water

Bring all ingredients, except 4 teaspoons of cornstarch and 3 tablespoons cold water, to a boil, then lower heat to simmer the sauce for about 5 minutes. Give the mixture a little taste; if it needs a little more sugar, now is the time to add it, when it will dissolve well. Mix together the cornstarch and water, gradually add to the sauce, stirring well until thickened. Refrigerate.

WORD HISTORY:
Pickle-For a fairly common word, this word's history is not totally clear. It first appeared in English in the 1400s, and seems to have been a borrowing from Low German/Middle Dutch "pekel," perhaps with Frisian "pikel" thrown in. Where any of these West Germanic languages got the word remains in question. Its main meaning was, and "generally" remains, "to use a salt, spices and liquid solution to preserve and flavor meat." It "might" be somehow connected to the ancestor of "pike;" that is, "pike," "the long heavy spear used in the Middle Ages," except for ceremony nowadays, with the idea of "sharp, pointed," because of the taste. Low German Saxon has "Pekel," (East) Frisian has " päkel" and German has (verb) "pökeln," but German borrowed the word from Low German. It is "assumed" that the original root word is from Germanic, as there are no other languages seemingly with a form of the word,* except the Germanic languages, and even then, it seems to be confined to the West Germanic languages, which includes English, but, as already noted, it was borrowed by English. Initially in English, it was spelled "pikyll" and "pekille," and it meant a "spicy, sour sauce for meat." During the 1500s, the word came to be used for a bad situation, "We're in a real pickle," probably from the idea of "spicy (hot) and sour" (bad). It wasn't until the early 1700s that the word started to be used for vegetables, often cucumbers, in a brine, often with the brine containing vinegar, with the "pickled cucumber" taking their very name as a derivative of the process, "pickles," although fermented pickles (uncooked and treated with salt, and often with little or no vinegar) and other vegetables have become more common in recent times. When I first ordered "pickles" in an Indian restaurant, many years ago, I was stunned to see things other than what I knew as "pickles," because in the cultures of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, pickles are any number of fruits and vegetables preserved and strongly seasoned with salt, chili peppers and a variety of wonderful spices. So, if you order pickles in an Indian restaurant, don't expect to see what you get with your corned beef sandwich at the neighborhood deli. Of course, the word was carried to the southern Asian region when Britain controlled the area. The "preserving of meat" meaning in English is now more often referred to as "curing;" as in, "cured ham," which might or might not also be smoked. 

* Hungarian has a form of the word, but it was borrowed from German. By the way, Hungarian is not even an Indo European language, and is therefore not even on the family tree of English, although Hungarian has borrowed many words from Indo European languages, frequently German. Hungarian is related to Finnish, Estonian, and Turkish, to name a few of its relatives.