A Formerly Top Secret Chili Sauce

For many years, this recipe was a closely guarded secret, known only to a few trusted kitchen staff working under my tutelage. It represents a top secret chili sauce with a history of betrayal, subterfuge and downright skulduggery. However, those lured to rival establishments with a promise of riches, always failed to understand the complexities of it flavours. As a result, they never truly managed to replicate the sweet, sticky spiciness with a hint of hard alcohol, and always fell short of recreating the chicken wings I designed it for.

Now, however, as a new career path beckons, I will once and for all reveal the secrets of my skillfully engineered chili sauce!

A Few Choice Words to Help Recreate the Top Secret Chili Sauce

Chilies – I developed this recipe in China based around the 小米辣 (Xiao Mi La) chili pepper, but its nearest readily available equivalent is probably the birds eye chili. For me, 15 chilies hits just about the right heat profile, but feel free to adjust it so that it suits your own palate.

Honey – Right, so here’s the thing, what we’re after from the honey is its sweetness and sticky texture. So, whereas people might expect some top shelf bee produce, what we actually want is the most basic honey available. This essentially means that clear yellow stuff that’s probably more sugar syrup than actual godly nectar. The good news, however, is that it’s cheap as chips and won’t break the bank!

Tomato Ketchup – Go for a well established brand like Heinz here, cheap ketchup is just awful!

Applications

I initially designed the formerly top secret chili sauce for my own sticky chicken wings recipe, but it will also work wonders as a dipping sauce, or to add an extra bit of bite to a hamburger.