Easy Homemade Sweet Chili Sauce

Today I was going to buy some chili sauce at the supermarket. Then I took a look at the list of ingredients of the brand available in my grocery shop and at the price. Guess what? 2€ for a smallish bottle of something that consisted mainly of water and sugar!

I left the bottle on the shelf and decided to try to make my own chili sauce.

It was super easy - and the ingredients cost next to nothing (my estimate is around 30 cents). Another good thing is, you can regulate the amount of chili yourself!

This recipe is based on three different recipes that I found with a quick Google search for “homemade chili sauce”. There were around 13 million results, so I guess there are a lot of people doing chili sauce at home :D

This is what you need:

• 100ml sugar


• 50ml rice or white wine vinegar


• 50ml + 2 Tbsp water


• 1/3 tsp salt


• 1 espresso spoon of chili flakes


• 1 Tbsp tomato paste


• 2 garlic cloves, crushed


• 2/3 Tbsp all-purpose flour

And this is how to do it:

Combine all ingredients except for the flour and 2 Tbsp water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and let simmer 2-3 minutes. Now mix well the flour in the remaining water, pour in the pan and whisk energetically. Let simmer over a low heat until the sauce thickens, or about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool – and voilà! Your homemade chili sauce is ready to be used!

My bet is that this stuff keeps well quite long in the fridge. And even if it doesn’t, there’s way too much chili for you to taste any difference :D

Sticky Toffee Sauce

Sticky toffee sauce is one of my favourite accompaniments for ice cream and/or strawberries. I used to make it myself quite often a long, long time ago, but not being a fan of cooking that hot syrup (sooo afraid of burning it, me, or the kids :) ), I haven’t made it in many years now.

But going through my old magazines I came across one toffee sauce recipe where you don’t actually need to melt any sugar – you can use molasses instead. So I’m back to my sticky toffee sauce routine!

This is a dessert you can make while preparing the main course - all you really need to do is to stir the sauce once a while during the ten minutes it needs to cook.

For 6 people you need:

• 100ml dark molasses (or dark treacle; Zuckerrübensirup here in Germany)


• 200ml heavy cream (non-dairy for a vegan version)


• 30g butter (or vegan margarine)

Combine molasses and cream in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, and let boil over a low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring once in a while. The sauce is ready when it starts to thicken. Now, add the butter, let it melt, and stir until the butter is well combined with the rest. Remove from the heat.

Serve hot, warm, or cold with ice cream and/or berries or fruit – if you resist the temptation to spoon it all up just like that…!

P.S. Nothing compares with the taste of a homemade sticky toffee sauce - with three ingredients. And I find the colour perfect as well. Makes me wonder how come the ones available at the supermarket have so many ingredients: one that I saw had 15 altogether – among them two different artificial flavours, colouring agents, and so on. Totally unnecessary, if you ask me ;)

Ratatouille that even picky kids will love!

Can you guess what evil powers hide in this innocent-looking tomato sauce? I served it a few days ago to my kids - while we adults were eating ratatouille. Well, at least our kids couldn’t guess it was actually their official number one least favourite dish. Pureeing ratatouille was a great tip I learned from a friend, and it really works. I don’t know how long it will take for my little ones to figure out my little secret, but hopefully by then they are as addicted to ratatouille as I am!

For about 4 portions you need

• one medium-sized onion, chopped


• 1 courgette and eggplant each, cut into smallish cubes


• 2-3 peppers (I prefer using 1 green and 2 red ones), cut into squares


• 500g tomatoes, peeled and chopped


• 2-3 garlic cloves


• juice of half of a lemon


• 2 tsp agave syrup


• salt and pepper to taste


• olive oil

Sauté the onions in olive oil, then add peppers, fry a couple of minutes, then add eggplants and courgettes and fry and additional 5-7 minutes. Now, add tomatoes, garlic, lemon juice and agave syrup, and salt and pepper. Let simmer over medium to low heat at least 45 minutes. Serve with pasta, rice, couscous, or a good bread! For kids (or any picky adults ;) ) puree it and serve with pasta - I love fusilli because the sauce penetrates the pasta in a way even my littlest one can’t possibly get the sauce out..!

If you’re making ratatouille in winter, use canned tomatoes instead. It might not be exactly as good as with fresh ones, but it is still very tasty!

Tomato Chutney

When I saw this recipe in die Zeit Magazin, I had to try it at once! I just happened to have all the ingredients at home, except for coriander seeds, but as usual, I was too lazy to go shopping just to get some seeds, so I tried it without them - and it worked perfectly! I guess the trick here is to use premium quality fresh tomatoes - those hard, orange-coloured lame excuses for tomatoes one gets in the winter just won’t do - and let the chutney simmer over a long time so it really gets caramel-like.

I’m not very big fan of too spicy stuff so instead of one entire chili I used some crushed peperoncino, maybe ⅓ tsp, and it was just perfect for my taste. When I first tasted this chutney, it felt a bit too spicy, but once it had cooled down, it had lost some of the edge and was just the way I like it.

This chutney is a great match for different kinds of cheeses, my favourite being soft chèvre. Feel free to try it with anything else you like - I got so addicted to it I was tempted to try in my morning oatmeal as well!

Ingredients

• 250 g onions, preferably red


• 500 g tomatoes


• 5 garlic cloves


• 1 red chili pepper


• 1–2 cm piece of ginger


• 1 Tbsp coriander seeds


• 75 ml apple cider vinegar


• 100 g brown sugar


• Salt and pepper to taste (oops, I forgot these, as they were last on the list and it seems I didn’t read it until the end, then; but it worked well even without!

Peel and chop tomatoes, onions, ginger, garlic, and chili, place all ingredients in a heavy pan and cook over a low heat for at least 40 minutes. Pour into clean jars - and that's it!