Szechuan is a province in south-west China. Their cuisine is known for being rich, bold and spicy largely due to their extensive use of Szechuan peppers in almost anything.
Szechuan sauce was brought into the limelight for a limited time in 1998 to promote the Disney movie Mulan. The Simpsons famously featured the sauce in one of their episodes which encouraged McDonald’s to bring back the sauce for a one day event which saw 20 million packets sold out in a matter of hours. The story goes that thousands of fans flocked to stores which needed urgent police back-up to control attendees. But hey, skip the lines and make your own sauce at home.
When you make your own Szechuan sauce you can tailor the flavour to the heat you can handle but expect both a sweet and savoury flavour with a peppery kick.
A reddit user provided the following “copycat” sauce recipe.
How to make Szechuan sauce
What you’ll need
- 6 garlic cloves, minced
- 4 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons plum sake
- 3 ½ tablespoons of sriracha sauce
- 2 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ginger, minced
- Dried chilli flakes to taste
How to do it
- In a saucepan cook garlic over medium heat and allow to become fragrant.
- Add vinegar, soy sauce and plum sake and reduce the heat.
- Once reduced add sugar, sriracha, ginger and chilli to taste.
You can use Szechuan sauce with pretty much anything! It is the perfect addition to chicken, tacos and of course chicken nuggets! Here are a couple of recipes we’d include it in.
Salt and Pepper Prawn Skewers
These will be a hit at your next barbecue. Get the recipe.
