Spicy Stir-fry Sauce

Just a quick post, because I realized that we’ve been using up our fabulous new sauce, and hadn’t shared it with anybody!

Spicy Stir-fry Sauce

• 1/2 Cup Pepper (capsicum) Flakes
• 1 inch Cinnamon (Cassia) stick
• 6 Allspice Berries, cracked
• 1 Cup Sweet Sherry
• 1/4 Cup Vodka
• 1 Cup Water
• 2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
• 3 Tbsp Sugar

1. Add your pepper flakes, sherry, vodka, and spices to a nonreactive pot.
2. Bring to a boil & reduce until almost all of the liquid is gone.
3. Add water, return to a boil, and remove from heat.
4. Let sit overnight.
5. Strain (really squeeze out the liquid) into a jar; discard pepper flakes & spices.
6. Add sugar & balsamic.
7. Shake or stir periodically, until the sugar is dissolved.
8. Refrigerate.

The alcohol is important here, as it will help to pull the essential oils from the peppers & spices. Don’t let it reduce too much – the whole idea is for this to be a thin sauce, without any salt, so that you can include it towards the very end of a stir-fry without effecting anything but the heat component (hence the lack of salt). We’ve been using this sauce for several days now, in our morning tofu/vegetable stir-fry, and it’s fabulous! It gives an almost coconut essence to things, and you can really taste the cinnamon & allspice, without anything being too overwhelming. We’re about half-done with it, though, so we’re going to vary the treatment next time – but we’ll have to see; this is such a delightful sauce, I don’t really know that I want to change anything about it. That’s such a rare thing for me – actually wanting to follow a recipe – that it should tell you something about this sauce: it’s awesome.

Do let us know if you make it, and how you like it!

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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.