How interchangeable are chili pastes?

April 27, 2020 1:02 PM

I don't think I've ever used chili paste when cooking, but I'd like to try. I'm aiming to get a little heat in fairly simple dishes - noodles, say, or vegetables over rice. Which paste should I buy - and how interchangeable are they?

If I wanted to make something sort of Thai one week and something sort of Chinese the next week and something sort of Indian another time, can I use the same chili paste, or do the products vary enough to really only work with a particular cuisine?

Also, I do have a jar of harissa. Can I use that in any kind of dish, or does it really only work for North African dishes?

Thanks!

posted by kristi to Food & Drink (11 answers total)

The heat level can vary, obviously. But the other ingredients and how the sauce is prepared will have an effect on the overall flavor as well. Some use soy or sesame oil, for example, which will taste very different from each other. Some use vinegar or add garlic.

If you get something that's very close to just chili peppers, you can doctor it to make it closer to the specific cuisine you're going for.
posted by Candleman at 1:20 PM on April 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Chili garlic sauce (example) can work well across a variety of Asian cuisines, and to add some heat for the types of dishes you describe.

Personally I've found gochujang only seems to work for Korean food, but this may be because there's a lot going on besides just chili, including some type of sweetener.

If your goal is just to add some heat, then you can just find a chili paste or sauce that you like, and add it to what you are cooking. If your goal is to recreate specific flavor profiles form particular cuisines, then like the other commenters point out, one chili paste may not work across different cuisines without considerable doctoring.
posted by needled at 1:56 PM on April 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Another delivery mechanism to consider is dried crushed chilli / chilli flakes. I prefer it dried to wet chilli paste. Buying a large jar of chilli that you don't enjoy the taste of and trying to use it up can be a miserable experience.

When I search for crushed chilli, an online store claims the following:
> Dried chillies taste rather different to the fresh variety due to the caramelisation of the sugars that occurs during the drying process.
So maybe that's why I prefer the dried stuff. Caramelisation of the sugars.

I cook a lot of vegetarian stir fries (onion + chilli + vegetables (often eggplant) + tofu + soy sauce) & occasionally do a more italian-style tomato base sauce. The starting point for all of these meals is to stir fry a few onions & a teaspoon or three of dried chilli (& garlic if i have it).
posted by are-coral-made at 2:14 PM on April 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

I find sambal oelek to be one of the more versatile chili pastes out there. It's similar to Huy Fong garlic chili sauce, but pared down and usually without garlic - it's usually just ground red chili, vinegar, and salt. It works in pretty much anything that can play well with a slightly-vinegary condiment.
posted by blerghamot at 2:39 PM on April 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

I disagree with needled- to me gochujang is super versatile-, because of the sweetness and vinegar it's great teaspoon at a time to add to a dish- if you want it more tart- add more vinegar, if you want it sweeter add more sugar, more spicy add some chili flake or powder of your choice- but It does depend on your sorta prefered flavor profile.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:11 PM on April 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Agreed that gochujang is pretty versatile. I think it's great in marinades and bastes, for instance. And, yes, sambal oelek is even MORE versatile.

Interestingly, at least to my palate, these two condiments represent the opposite ends of the Chili Paste Versatility scale: genericness and complexity. It's the sauces in the middle of that scale that are, to me, less versatile.

The "complexity" angle is why I recommend to anyone who'll listen a terrific hot sauce that happens to be near where I live. One of the best I've ever had.

And harissa, the most delicious of all condiments, is great on EVERYTHING savory, I swear.
posted by Dr. Wu at 4:15 PM on April 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sambal oelek is delicious and easy to use either as an ingredient or a table condiment. It’s on the salty side so maybe under-salt your dish a little when you’re getting used to it.
I love it on: noodles, rice, any meat, tofu, stir fry, scrambled eggs, hash browns...
posted by nouvelle-personne at 8:54 PM on April 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Nthing sambal oelek as something that goes well with a lot of cuisines. I find it has a fresher pepper flavor than a lot of chili pastes, which can get somewhat "deep" flavored at times (though that deeper flavor is tasty in its own right). I prefer it to gochujang, which has a sweetness that I'm not wild about for everything, and chili garlic sauce, which is good but - well - garlicky.

And seconding are-coral-made's suggestion of dried crushed peppers as another way of getting heat into a wide variety of dishes. The quality of what you buy makes a big difference - the good stuff has robust pepper flavor along with the heat (I guess from that carmelization going on as mentioned above); the less good stuff just tastes like spicy cellophane bits (think the red pepper shakers at a pizza restaurant).If you're interested, Big Diehl Peppers is a smaller operation that has some tasty blends - I just treated myself to a bottle of their hatch/jalapeno/ghost pepper blend ("Down the Hatch") and have been putting it on everything.
posted by DingoMutt at 10:16 PM on April 27, 2020

Do you have to use a paste? The most versatile thing is fresh chiles. Pretty much every American grocery has serranos, that's a hot generic chile you can use in small amounts to get heat and not much vegetable flavor in any dish. Thai birds eye chilis are the best for adding heat (and nothing else); those are easily found in Asian groceries and they freeze OK. Habaneros are also good but have a slightly fruity flavor. Milder peppers like Fresnos, Anaheims, and Jalapeños are delicious but you're adding a lot of vegetable along with the heat.

If you don't want fresh, the simplest option is hot dried red pepper flakes, the kind you put on pizza. They work in pretty much every cuisine. A Chinese chili oil (not chili crisp!) is kind of the same thing, only the chilis immersed in oil.

The problem with chili pastes is they pretty much all have another flavor in them. I love sambal oelek but it's fermented and has a strong sour flavour. Huy Fong chile garlic paste is great but has a noticeable garlic flavor. Gochujang tastes like gochujang; it'd be super odd to add it to, say, an Italian tomato sauce.

You say you want to make something only "sort of Thai", so maybe cross-cultural flavors don't bug you. But to me that means you're already buying ginger, garlic, cilantro, lemongrass, and limes. At that point why not throw a couple of fresh chiles in the shopping basket? Alternately buy a jar of Thai curry paste in the flavor you like; it'll only be good for Thai food, but it'll last a long time in the fridge.
posted by Nelson at 6:49 AM on April 28, 2020

You can also make your own chili paste from whole dried chilis... dry roast in a frying pan on medium-high until aromas start to fill the air (good ventilation is important if you're using really hot chilis), allow to cool, open and de-seed, soak in just enough heated water to cover the pieces for about 30 minutes, blend in food processor or blender with a pinch of salt. Mix and match different varieties of peppers and it'll never be exactly the same twice.
posted by remembrancer at 8:25 AM on April 28, 2020

Another vote for making your own; then you can really tailor it to what you prefer. There are a gajillion recipes out there but simpler is better for your purposes. I basically do what remembrancer suggests above, but usually add a little lime juice. My favorite base right now is roasted and ground Burmese chili, because it's HOT. But I have had excellent results starting from whole Guajillo and Pasilla chiles.

Sambal oelek is extremely versatile, and can go in damn near anything. I happen to agree that gochujang doesn't work particularly well in some things - I love the stuff, but would be disinclined to use it in Mexican, West African, or South Asian dishes. Of course anywhere you can get prepared gochujang also probably has excellent Korean chili powder, which I use as a base for pastes and sauces on the regular.

Fresh chilis are a completely different animal to dried, and I would in no way consider them interchangeable. Especially because in a supermarket you're usually getting underripe fruit, which is sharper-tasting and often hasn't developed its complex sugars. A number of my better recipes use combinations of fresh and dried. Most of my good hand-me-down Mexican recipes use a couple different kinds of dried chiles in addition to fresh.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:46 PM on April 28, 2020