Sambal Oelek (aka Sambal Ulek). A delicious spicy chili sauce made with chilies, onion, shallots, garlic, tomatoes and oil. Ready in 20 minutes!
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What is Sambal Oelek?
Sambal Oelek is a flavorful hot chili garlic sauce that comes from Indonesia. It's often used in South-East Asian as one of their iconic spicy condiments. Furthermore, the main ingredient is red chili peppers and green chilies. Other ingredients include tomatoes, shallots, onion, garlic, oil, and other seasoning ingredients. Sambal oelek is used in noodle dishes like Mee Goreng, Mee Bodoh, or curries, stir fries, nasi goreng or as a condiment to any dish you want to make spicy. It is sometimes used to marinate meat in Southeast Asia. The natural color comes from the red chilies and tomatoes.
What does Sambal Oelek taste like?
Sambal oelek is a spicy chili paste that chunky in texture, thanks to the hot red chile peppers, green chile peppers, tomatoes, onions and shallots. The flavor of the ground fresh chili paste is elevated with chicken powder, sugar, salt and garlic. My sambal oelek recipe is different from Sriracha sauce as it's not smooth and it's more thick.
Ingredients
You will need the following ingredients for the best sambal oelek. Please scroll down to Recipe Card below for full measurements.
- Neutral oil: any flavorless oil like avocado oil, peanut oil, grapeseed oil, vegetable oil or canola oil with a high smoke point. I would avoid using olive oil or coconut oil due to its heavier scent.
- Red chilies: for mild use whole red chilies (serrano peppers, cayenne peppers, or red jalapenos) that have been de-seeded. For extra spicy use bird's eye chilies.
- Green chilies: for mild use jalapeño peppers that have been de-seeded. For extra spicy use bird's eye chilies
- Tomatoes of any kind (I used cherry tomatoes for a sweeter flavour)
- Shallots
- Onion
- Garlic cloves
- Sugar
- Salt: or soy sauce
- Chicken powder
- Lime juice
How to make Sambal Oelek
Char Aromatics
First in a hot wok or large pan on high heat, add 2 tablespoon vegetable oil, followed by your red and green chilis, onion, shallots, tomatoes and garlic cloves. Char them until the edges are browned.
Blend Aromatics into a Paste
Remove and transfer aromatics to a blender, food processor or stone mortar and pestle. Then blend on high or ground chili peppers and other ingredients until finely grounded.
Cook Paste
Next pour the ingredients back into the pan (I recommend turning on the stove fan on high or cooking this outdoors on a portable stovetop to prevent inhaling hot chili smoke which can lead to a coughing fest!)
Season Paste
Then bring the paste to a boil and add ½ cup vegetable oil, sugar, salt, lime juice and chicken powder. Stir to mix.Â
Next allow this to simmer on low heat for 10 minutes uncovered. Taste and season with more sugar, salt or chicken powder if needed.
Cool & Transfer to a Resealable Jar
Lastly allow the hot sauce to cool and transfer to a mason jar. Serve & enjoy!
Storage
Store sambal sauce in fridge in an airtight container to last for at least a week. In addition, you can freeze chilled sambal oelek in a ziplock bag or plastic container and it will last up 5-6 months.
Expert Tips
- When grinding or cooking the paste, avoid inhaling the paste. Otherwise, it's very spicy and can cause you to cough uncontrollably. Furthermore, I would recommend turning the stove fan on high or cooking the paste outside.
- Allow the aromatics to char and get browned on the edges. This creates more flavor.
- Do not skip on the chicken powder! This creates a deep umami flavor.
FAQ
Can I use dried chilies?
I would not recommend it as a substitute unless you rehydrate them with water. For best results, fresh whole chilies are recommended.
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📖 Recipe
Quick & Easy Sambal Oelek (Indonesia Chili Paste)
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoon vegetable oil or any neutral oil
- 70 grams red chili peppers For mild version: use red chili peppers like serrano's, fresno, cayenne, or tobasco. For extra spicy: use bird's eye chillies
- 70 grams green chili peppers For mild version, use jalapeno peppers. For extra spicy: use bird's eye chillies
- 260 grams tomatoes I used cherry tomatoes for a sweeter flavour
- 2 shallots halved
- 1 small yellow onion sliced
- 1 bulb garlic peeled
Seasoning
- ½ cup vegetable oil or any neutral oil
- 4 tablespoon white granulated sugar
- ½ tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 3 teaspoon chicken bouillon powder omit if vegan (aka chicken stock powder)
Instructions
- In a hot wok or deep pan on high heat, add 2 tablespoon vegetable oil, followed by your red and green chilis, onion, shallots, tomatoes and garlic cloves. Char them until the edges are browned.
- Remove and transfer to a blender, food processor or mortar and pestle. Blend on high or ground with pestle until finely grounded.
- Pour the ingredients back into the pan. Tip: I recommend turning on the stove fan on high or cooking this outdoors on a portable stovetop to prevent inhaling hot chili smoke which can lead to a coughing fest!
- Bring the paste to a boil and add ½ cup vegetable oil, sugar, salt, lime juice and chicken powder. Stir to mix. Allow this to simmer on low heat for 10 minutes uncovered. Taste and season with more sugar, salt or chicken powder if needed.
- Allow this to cool and transfer to a mason jar. Serve & enjoy!
Blaze
Love Love Love this recipe, I've tried many, this is clean, simple and delicious.
And I've made it many times, recently l subbed peaches for the tomatoes as my tree was loaded, turned out amazing. I didn't add the peaches until the second fry and only added half the oil, as the mixture was more moist then the original recipe.
Taste's brilliant, keep up the great work Christie
Christie Lai
Thank you so much for the very kind and positive review, Blaze!!! I'm so happy that you love this recipe so much 🙂 Music to my ears! Thanks for also sharing your recent experience in substituting with peaches this time! How creative. I will have to try that myself. Have a wonderful weekend!
Angie B
What a great find, your recipe. I have been searching stores in Canada and they are telling me there is a problem with the ingredients, sauce is not available any more here. So I put together the best I could your recipe and I have a lovely sauce. Many thanks!!!
christieathome
Amazing, thanks so much for making it with the ingredients that you could find! Happy it worked out.
Rebecca
This recipe is amazing, thank you
christieathome
So happy to read this! Thanks so much for making it, Rebecca! Have a great day.
Anja
Thanks for sharing this more authentic Sambal Olek recipe Christine. Everyone in the internet food universe is using food processors, but so many skip the cooking part, which is closer to how it's made in Indonesia. I'll be putting this one in my recipe book, because like you, I can't live without Sambal Olek. I love making Nasi Goreng but it's become either to expensive, or harder to find good Sambal Olek's to buy.
christieathome
You're very welcome Anja! I'm so glad I could share this authentic way of making this delicious condiment! Thanks for your kind comment and have a lovely day!
Sharron LeVere
Hi Christie! I am making this recipe and I have noticed that in the list of ingredients you ask for 1 bulb od garlic! Is that 1 clove or the whole bulb? If so that is a lot of garlic! Can you please verify this for me. Much thanks!
christieathome
Hi Sharron! It's the whole bulb so that would be about 8 cloves of garlic. The garlic gives the sambal that delicious garlickly flavour so lots is needed 🙂
Heidi | The Frugal Girls
That was a great tip for using jalapenos without the seeds to help tone down the heat so I can serve this to my whole family!
Rosemary
This is the little dish I always see on the table at ramen places right?! PS- I love your tip for cooking it outdoors to reduce indoor air pollution!!
christieathome
Thanks Rosemary! At the ramen places, they probably serve a chili oil that is similar to this but Sambal Oelek contains tomatoes and chicken powder sometimes 🙂
Tasia ~ two sugar bugs
My husband and I love hot sauce!! I definitely need to try this one, especially since I make our dishes less spicy for the girls; then my husband and I can make our as spicy as we want!
Michelle | Sift & Simmer
Always had a jar of this hot sauce in the fridge! Love the addition of chicken powder to the sambal olek... gonna have to try this recipe!