An array of chile pastes make it easier than ever to bring a little — or a lot — of heat into your cooking. But how can you tell which one is right for you?
Chile pastes come in a range of tastes and textures and all deliver a welcome hit of heat.Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.
At their simplest, chile pastes are made from blended, crushed or chopped fresh or dried chiles that are mixed with oil, water or other liquids. Unlike hot sauces, which are overwhelmingly used as table condiments, chile pastes can often be building blocks in recipes. They can be cooked in oil to deepen their taste, or left raw for punchy verve. Many often include other seasonings, such as vinegar, salt, aromatics, spices or herbs, making them well-balanced enough to be used as a topping, sauce or dip. Others thrive when combined with rich ingredients like butter or bacon that tame their potent heat. All varieties will make dishes so wholly delicious you can’t resist going in for another bite.
There are countless chile pastes around the world, from Peru’s aji amarillo to South Africa’s piri piri to China’s doubanjiang, and all are worth trying. Here, we dive into eight types that are available in many stores and offer a range of tastes, textures and uses. Make some room in your pantry — you might just want them all.
Harissa
Fruity meets earthy
Earthy, fruity harissa delivers a foundation of flavor to shakshuka.Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Hadas Smirnoff
Harissa is at once earthy, musky and fruity, with a floral spiciness that can range from very mild to fire-breathing hot depending on the chiles used. This versatile Tunisian paste of ground dried chiles, garlic, spices (commonly coriander and caraway), olive oil and, sometimes, vinegar or lemon juice, is traditionally made with mild baklouti peppers, named for the city of Bekalta in Tunisia. From there, it spread throughout North Africa and beyond. Because harissa already has a well-rounded mix of flavorful ingredients, it can be a useful shortcut when you don’t want to pull out additional spices or chop garlic for a dish.
What to Buy
Harissa varies in consistency, but is commonly sold as a thick paste with a bit of texture from the chiles. (Some also include tomatoes or bell peppers.) It varies widely in spiciness: Look for the heat level on the packaging. If your harissa is particularly spicy, start with half the amount a recipe calls for and build up according to your preference.
How to Use It
Harissa plays a large role in everything from Tunisian lablabi soup to shakshuka, and can also be used in other dishes like long-cooked stews, quick pastas, or roasted or grilled meats. It also adds huge flavor straight from the jar: Spoon it on morning eggs, whisk it into a vinaigrette, or mix with mayonnaise for sandwiches or with Greek yogurt for a two-ingredient dip. If you have harissa spice, a dry mix of ground chiles and spices, use it as a spice rub for meat or sprinkle it over popcorn.
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Sambal Oelek
Sharp, fresh heat
A spoonful or two of sambal oelek adds an acidic punch and a hint of heat to mie goreng, an Indonesian noodle stir-fry.Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
Sambal, a cornerstone condiment found throughout Indonesia and extending to Malaysia and Singapore, encompasses countless versions both cooked and raw. Homemade recipes for punchy sambal oelek might include upward of a dozen ingredients and involve the “ulek” (or “oelek” in the Dutch spelling) process of pounding them together in a mortar with an ulekan, a curved type of pestle. But the variety in most supermarkets and Asian grocery stores in the United States likely doesn’t contain much more than fresh red chiles, distilled vinegar and salt. A mix of fresh, predominantly red chiles bring vegetal heat (think raw jalapeños) and the vinegar packs an acidic punch, creating a loose sauce that adds not only spice but also noticeable sharpness to dishes.
What to Buy
Make sure to seek out products specifically labeled “sambal oelek,” as there are many other packaged sambals with different flavor profiles. Look for one that’s primarily made of chiles, salt and vinegar.
How to Use It
Add it to Southeast Asian dishes and anywhere you crave hot and tangy flavors: Stir some into chicken soup for some sinus-clearing heat, add a spoonful to a marinade or stir-fry, whisk it into a sauce for hot or cold noodles, or use it to top off breakfast tacos. Because it’s so vinegary, start with just a teaspoon or two.
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Gochujang
A little sweet and pretty spicy
Gochujang, the fermented Korean chile paste, offers intrigue in this otherwise classic chewy sugar cookie.Bobbi Lin for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich. Prop Stylist: Christina Lane.
Gochujang is arguably the best-known in the West of the three prized mother jangs, or fermented sauces, that form the foundation of Korean cuisine (in addition to doenjang, the Korean fermented soybean paste, and ganjang, Korean soy sauce). Just a small amount of this thick, crimson paste adds irresistible spicy sweetness and a touch of funk to classics like Korean fried chicken, bibimbap and tteokbokki. Made by drying, grinding and fermenting fruity Korean red chiles (which are sold in their flake form as gochugaru) with glutinous rice, fermented soybeans, salt and a sweetener such as barley or rice syrup, gochujang works beautifully in both cooked and raw dishes.
What to Buy
Gochujang is not traditionally gluten-free, as it is often made with barley or wheat products; look for brands specifically labeled gluten-free if needed. In all cases, try to seek out brands that use sun-dried red chiles, sometimes listed as “taeyangcho,” which provide the fullest expression of chile flavor.
How to Use It
Gochujang is potent stuff, so you probably won’t want to dollop it directly onto your fried eggs. It shines when used in tandem with other ingredients, such as toasted sesame oil and soy sauce. It also loves to be amplified by honey, brown sugar and maple syrup or tamed by fat (think buttery spicy noodles or kimchi-and-bacon fried rice). Because gochujang contains a decent amount of sugar, avoid cooking it over very high heat to prevent scorching and line your baking sheet with a silicone mat or foil to help with cleanup.
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Sriracha
Garlicky and tart-sweet
The garlicky heat of sriracha (along with soy sauce, mayo and vinegar) creates a creamy tuna salad that evokes a spicy tuna roll.Nico Schinco for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.
The cult garlicky chile sauce in the familiar green-tipped squeeze bottle is a uniquely American condiment, concocted by the entrepreneur David Tran when he immigrated from Vietnam and founded the now-giant Huy Fong Foods in Southern California in 1980. Affectionately referred to as “rooster sauce” for the bird graphic on the Huy Fong Foods label, sriracha is thinner than ketchup, with a pungent, garlicky spiciness and a backdrop of tartness, sweetness and fermented funkiness.
What to Buy
Several brands of sriracha now crowd supermarket shelves, and the best bottle is very much a matter of personal preference. Don’t confuse American-style sriracha with sriraja panich, the popular traditional Thai sriracha, which has a very different flavor profile. If you’re making a Thai dish that calls for sriracha, seek out sriraja panich.
How to Use It
It’s balanced enough that you can enjoy it as a condiment — say, squirted on a hot dog, in pho or over an omelet — but you can also add it to stir-fry sauces, marinades for grilled meats, a glaze for roast salmon, and, of course, mayonnaise.
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Calabrian Chile Paste
Chunky with vibrant, slow-burning heat
Italian arrabbiata sauce gets its fire from plenty of Calabrian chiles (and crushed red pepper) simmered with the tomatoes.Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
“Paste” might be a bit of a misnomer for this very chunky and intensely spicy condiment hailing from Calabria in southwestern Italy, where it seasons many of the local dishes. Calabrian chiles are crushed or finely chopped, seeds and all, then mixed with olive oil, salt and sometimes vinegar and other seasonings for a vibrant and complex flavor.
What to Buy
Calabrian chile paste is sold under various names (and in a range of textures): chopped Calabrian peppers, crushed Calabrian chile pepper paste, minced jarred Calabrian chiles and crushed hot chile peppers. These are all interchangeable; look for ingredient lists that primarily consist of finely chopped Calabrian chiles packed in oil.
How to Use It
These chiles make a great garnish for a slice of pizza or a bowl of hot pasta; it also makes an excellent spicy dipping oil for bread when thinned out with good extra-virgin olive oil. Combine some with a splash of vinegar as a (spicier) substitute for sambal oelek in most recipes. Calabrian chile paste is too chunky to evenly coat roasted vegetables or meats on its own, but can be stirred into sauces as an ingredient.
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Chipotles en Adobo
Smoky and tomato-sweet
Smoky chipotles are blended with sour cream, honey, garlic and spices to make a flavorful coating for chicken wings.Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Brett Regot.
The smoky, fiery deliciousness packed into a tiny can of chipotles en adobo is so powerful that it’s easy to detect the chiles’ presence in any dish. More of a sauce with whole chiles than a paste (but just as versatile), this Mexican and Southwestern pantry ingredient is made by marinating smoked and dried ripe jalapeños (also known in this form as chipotle peppers) in adobo, a thick, rich and slightly sweet marinade of tomatoes, vinegar, garlic and spices. If you want all the flavor of the adobo sauce without having to deal with the whole chiles, you can purée or finely chop the chipotles together with the adobo sauce and store in an airtight container in the fridge, where it will stay good for about a month.
What to Buy
Chipotles en adobo are sold whole, diced or crushed; diced or crushed chipotles can be convenient if you’d rather not deal with the whole chiles inside the can.
How to Use It
You can use both the adobo sauce and the chipotles themselves in all kinds of sauces, marinades, soups and braises. Chipotle adds depth to a simple black bean soup, lends a tempting charred, smoky flavor to barbecue sauce, and is a no-brainer in chili, chicken tinga and other long-cooked dishes.
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Nam prik pao
Jammy, hot umami
The brick red color and much of the flavor in Thai tom yum goong soup comes from stirring nam prik pao into the broth.Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
This textured, paste-like Thai chile jam in a pool of red oil is an incredibly well-balanced mix of sweet, smoky, tangy and mildly spicy, with layer upon layer of umami and seafood depth from ingredients like fish sauce and dried shrimp. “Pao” means to burn or grill, referring to the garlic and shallots at the foundation of this sauce, which are often charred. Sweetness comes from palm sugar and tang from tamarind.
What to Buy
Nam prik pao is sometimes labeled roasted red chili paste, chile paste in oil or roasted chili jam.
How to Use It
Add a spoonful to soup, salad dressing, a simple stir-fry of tofu or chicken with vegetables, fried rice or garlicky sautéed greens. Nam prik pao begs to be spooned over a bowl of hot white rice with a fried egg or a crispy-edged omelet. It adds a kick to many Thai dishes and is also wonderful wherever you might use red pepper jelly or tomato jam: as a schmear in a grilled cheese, on a warm biscuit with fried chicken, as a topping for chicken liver mousse or on a soft-scrambled egg sandwich.
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Shito
Deep and savory
The savory, funky taste of shito adds depth to a warm dip of collard greens, simmered with the trinity of garlic, onion and bell pepper.Chris Simpson for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Pappas.
Also called shitor or shitoh, shito is a savory, funky Ghanaian chile paste in oil (as well as the Ga term for chiles more broadly) that’s commonly served as a side with meals. The sauce is redolent with a deep seafood umami from dried fish products like crayfish powder, which is like fish sauce in powdered form, or smoked prawns. Onion, garlic and ginger often round out the mix.
What to Buy
“Shito” is a catch-all term for a variety of chiles and chile-based condiments, so look for jars that describe it as a chile pepper sauce or black pepper sauce from Ghana. While vegetarian and vegan versions of shito are available, they won’t have the same signature seafood umami-funk.
How to Use It
Its savory and funky flavor makes shito great as a condiment served at the table. Throughout Ghana, West Africa and beyond, it’s often served with fried or grilled fish or as a sauce to enliven starchy foods like fried plantains, roasted sweet potatoes or other tubers, or beans and rice. It also makes a great dipping sauce for chicken wings and can be used as an ingredient in seafood or fish stews.
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Creamy Collard Greens Dip With Shito
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