Vietnamese Sate Sauce - Sốt Sa Tế recipe
This is an incredibly spicy red sauce that is a wonderful ingredient to many meals, especially for stir-frying and grilling.
Ingredients
- Medium or huge lemongrass stalks white and very light green parts cut roughly (60g/2oz (or 3/4 cups chopped)
- 2 tablespoons chopped roughly dried shrimp Optional (15g/0.5oz)
- 1 tablespoon chopped and roughly chopped garlic (10g/0.4oz)
- 2 tablespoons chopped shallots (25g/0.9oz)
- 2 teaspoons of galangal roughly chopped (10-15g/0.4-0.5oz) Optional
- 3 medium or small bird's eye chilis and seeds removed
- Red bananas with 6 seeds or any other mildly spicy red peppers with seed removed (120g/4oz)
- 3/4 cup cooking oil with neutral flavor (180ml)
- 1 tablespoon salt (to taste)
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce (to taste)
- 1 tablespoon sugar (to taste)
Instructions
- Place the lemongrass along with dried shrimps (if you are using) inside a small food processor (or smaller food processor) and then process into small pieces. Transfer the pieces to a bowl and put aside.
- Place garlic, shallots galangal, and both kinds of chilis into the food processor (or food processor) and process into very tiny pieces. Be cautious to not to turn into an unrecognizable paste. Transfer to a bowl , and put aside.
- Cook oil on medium heat in a saucepan. Then, add the lemongrass that has been processed as well as dried shrimp. For 7-8 minutes, cook with stirring every now and then until lemongrass has diminished in volume and added only a little color.
- Incorporate the shallots processed with the chilis, galangal, and garlic to the dish. Then cook for around twenty minutes while stirring often until all the ingredients are softened. The sauce appears like red, and you can smell it. It is possible to lower the heat to a lesser degree if you need to.
- Add sugar, salt and soy sauce. Continue to cook for 8 to 10 minutes, allowing all flavors to blend and the sauce will have an extremely rich color. Adjust the seasonings to suit your taste.
- Transfer the sauce into an empty container or bowl and allow it to cool completely. It can be stored inside an airtight container in the fridge and it should be kept for several weeks.
Notes
The dried shrimps and galangal are not required. You can substitute the galangal by adding little bit of other aromatics (lemongrass or shallot, garlic). You can replace the shrimps that are dried with sugar, if you like. If you'd like the sauce to be spicier you can add a couple more bird's-eye chili.
In order to make the number of ingredients on the list, I make use of the following recipe. 3.5 cup Kitchenaid Chopper to make to process the aromatics. If you are looking to expand this recipe you will require a bigger food processor.