Sambal Chili

Sambal paste is one that requires hard labour to prepare and to cook. As women in Singapore join the labour force, many has taken the short cut when it comes to cooking. Prepacked blended chili (aka Chili Boh) is widely used and one that I dislike. It does make cooking much easier but what it does best is compromise on the flavour of a dish. 

So, what I did every weekend is to cook the base of the sambal paste which I can use for hundreds of other dishes. I will cook a lot of it, packed in a sanitised container and refrigerate or freeze it. It can lasts for 2mths in a freezer and 1mth in the fridge. 

**This sambal chili paste can be used for many dishes namely, Asam Pedas, Sambal Goreng Jawa, Ayam Masak Merah, Beef braised in Dark sauce, Beef in Tomato sauce, Laksa and many more. Can really cut cooking time by half! Yeay! 

Sambal Chili

(Makes one 1.5ltr ice cream tub)

Ingredients:

250gm Dried Red Chilies 

5 large Red Onions

6 cloves Garlic

30gm Belacan Melaka (dried shrimp paste)

1-1/2cups oil (can be used as garnishing for other dishes)

Few Pandan leaves

5 Shallots or One Medium Red Onion (julienne)

Method: 

1) Soaked the dried chili overnight in a pot of tap water. Cover the pot.

2) The next following morning, the chili would have soften and use a scissor to cut it into small pieces in random motion. This is to enable the seeds to be separated from the chili skin and settled to the bottom of the pot. 

3) Rinse the chili twice and let strained till ready to blend.

4) Blend all ingredients with onions at the bottom. This will ease the blending of the chili with less water used.

 

5) Heat up oil, with medium flame, fry in pandan leaves and the julienne red onion till the onion caramelised. 

6) Add in the blended paste. Keep flame at low-medium and let the sambal paste to cook. Continue to stir at every now and then so that it wont burnt. Cover with lid if need be as it will get messy when the chili started to boil.

 

7) Sambal is well-cooked when the oil turns dark red and be separated from the paste. Whole cooking time can stretch from 45mins to 1 hour.

8) Switch off flame and let cool before storing.

Follow my blogs for new recipes and how I use this basic sambal paste in many other dishes! xoxo