Inspired by Court's last post, here is a sauce adapted from Michael Smith's Chef at Home Easy Thai Dinner episode. The chile and lime give the peanut sauce extra depth of flavour, and it keeps in your fridge for several months so it's a great staple to have on hand.
Thai Peanut Sauce:
1 cup peanut butter
juice & zest of 1-2 limes
half of a minced & deseeded thai bird's eye chili
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
Put everything in the food processor and whizz together. Like this, you can jar it and keep it in the refrigerator. If you want to thin it out a bit when using it, just heat it up on a low heat and combine 2 parts sauce with 1 part milk or coconut milk. This gives a creamy sauce that makes a great dip for appetizers.
Bird's eye chiles are about 3-5cm long and very narrow and pointy. You can always find them at asian grocery stores, but the bigger chains often have them as well. If you can't find any, you can substitute a 1/2 tsp of dried chile flakes or hot sauce. I used natural peanut butter, so the sauce thicker, oilier, and less sweet than it would be if you use regular peanut butter. You may want to reduce the amount of sugar if the peanut butter you use is already sweetened.
Thats nothing like real thai peanut sauce. Sorry dude.
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure it goes without saying that real thai peanut sauce doesn't use peanut butter, but the Chef at Home show focuses more on making things that taste good and are easy to do at home.
This sauce tastes good, and is made with ingredients that are easy to find at pretty much any grocery store. Variations make life interesting!