Chinese Szechuan sauce Recipes

Schezwan Sauce plays a key role in various Schezwan recipes. I fell in love with the schezwan flavour only after shifting to Mumbai. In Mumbai the street vendors use schezwan sauce for creating various wonders apart from the usual usage of it in Fried rice and Noodles. The Schezwan sauce is spicy, tangy and slightly sweeter in taste. After many trials I must say I have created a Killer recipe for Schezwan sauce and this is my go to recipe for Schezwan sauce. Stay tuned for interesting creations with this Schezwan sauce. Check out , from the streets of Mumbai. I highly recommend you to try it.

If you are interested check out other Indo-Chinese recipes in my blog.

Schezwan Sauce Recipe:

Yields 1.5 cups of sauce

Prep time: 10 mins | Cooking time: 15 mins | Total time: 25 mins

Cuisine: Chinese/Indo-Chinese | Category: Sauces
Ingredients:

10-15 medium sized Garlic pods, peeled

10-12 Red chillies(I used Byadige variety)

3 tbsp. finely chopped Garlic

1 tbsp. finely chopped Ginger

1 tbsp. finely chopped Celery(or thick Coriander stems)

2 large Tomatoes, roughly chopped

1 tbsp. Tomato Sauce(optional)

1 tsp Soya Sauce

1 tbsp. Vinegar

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp White(or Black) Pepper powder

Salt to taste

2-3 tbsp. Oil

Method:

• Remove the stems of red chillies and soak them in warm water for half an hour. You can even remove the seeds if you cannot bear the heat.
• Grind the soaked red chillies with garlic pods to a fine paste.

• Grind chopped tomatoes to a smooth puree.
• Heat oil in a pan/kadai and add finely chopped garlic and sauté it nicely for a minute. Add finely chopped ginger and celery and sauté nicely until the raw smell of all the ingredients go away.

• Add pureed tomatoes and let it simmer for a while and then add ground red chili- garlic paste and fry nicely until the raw smell of tomatoes and red chili- garlic paste goes away and it leaves the oil in the edges

• Add tomato sauce(if using), vinegar, soya sauce, sugar, white(or black) pepper powder and salt and mix nicely and let it simmer for another 2-3 minutes. The sauces do have certain amount of salt, so add salt accordingly.

• If the sauce is very thick you can add some water and simmer again to get a thick sauce consistency of your requirement. I usually keep it thick so that it can be stored well for sometime.
• Cool the sauce and store it in an air tight container in refrigerator. You can easily keep it for a week in refrigerated when no water is added to it.

Use the sauce according to your requirement in the recipe.

Notes:

1. You can avoid tomatoes in the recipe and increase the tomato sauce to 3-4 tbsp. I usually do not like to add more tomato sauce as it makes the sauce very sweet and hence I prefer adding pureed tomatoes and just a dash of tomato sauce for added taste.
2. Make sure you fry all the ingredients well until their raw smell disappears which makes the sauce taste better.
3. You can use Schezwan sauce in various recipes like Schezwan fried rice, Noodles, Vegetables, Schezwan Tofu, Schezwan Paneer, Dosa and various snack varieties.
4. If you do not have celery in hand use finely chopped thick stems of coriander leaves(only stems, not leaves) instead. It works nice.
5. If you like you can add 1/2 tsp Ajinamoto in the recipe. I usually do not add it for health reasons.
6. Byadige chillies are less spicy and hence I prefer to add it. If you are using regular red chillies reduce the number of red chillies to 5-6 based on the spiciness of chillies. If you are not confident about the spiciness you can even remove the seeds and use, it will reduce the spiciness to a greater extent.

Try out these recipes with the Schezwan Sauce: