Schezwan Sauce recipe – 2 (शेजवान सोस)

Heat a Pan, preferrably a Wok. Once wok is nice and hot add Oil (2 tbsp). Schezwan sauce takes a little more oil because oil acts as a preservative.

To prepare Red Chilli paste - Soak dry red chillies for about an hour in water, remove seeds and grind it in a mixture to make fine paste.

Add finely chopped garlic to Hot oil. This sauce takes more of a Garlic so add around 20-25 cloves chopped garlic. Add 1 inch ginger finely chopped. Saute garlic until it turns into light brown. Rawness of garlic has to go.

Add red chilli paste (2 tbsp). It depends on how spicy you need your sauce based on that vary quantity of red chilli paste. For me I am not making it very spicy because even kids like Schezwan sauce.

Saute this mixture until all the oil separates. Add salt as per taste and White pepper powder 1/2 tsp. Mix it well in the sauce. At this stage you will not have the soft consistency which you are looking at. The reason for this is Chillies have to get well sauted, you cannot leave it raw because it gives you lot of flavour and at the same time Garlic have to be well sauted as well. Am I sounding like a teacher? But this is very important and you have to make a note of it when you are preparing Schezwan sauce at home.

Add 1/4 tsp of Soya Sauce to add little sourness to our sauce. Very little soya sauce because we dont want colour of soya sauce in our Sauce. Now add 2 tsp bottled Chilli Sauce available in market. If you wish you can add little more of that as bottled sauces are not very spicy. Saute it for a while.

Now add little bit of water to adjust the desired consistency. At this stage our sauce starts looking like a bottled schezwan sauce available in market.

Add 1/2 tsp sugar. Why do we add Sugar? Because red chillies are really sharp and the sauce becomes very spicy. If not spicy it becomes quite pungent. So we cut that spicyness with sugar. Now add 1 tsp of Vinegar and mix it well.

Schezwan sauce is ready to be used with various Rice and Noodles dishes.