Chilli Sauces and Pastes

part of: Chilli Pepper

Chilli sauces and pastes are concentrated chilli preparations that serve as both cooking ingredients and finishing condiments. This category includes everything from smooth, pourable hot sauces like Tabasco-style pepper sauces to thick pastes like sambal oelek, harissa, and gochujang.

As cooking ingredients, they’re stirred into curries, soups, marinades, and dressings to build heat and depth. As condiments, they’re served alongside meals for diners to adjust heat to their own preference. Many Asian, Latin American, and North African dishes rely on a specific style of chilli sauce or paste as a foundational flavour.

Australian kitchens increasingly stock multiple styles — a sriracha for noodles, a sambal for rice dishes, a chipotle paste for Mexican-inspired cooking. Most keep well in the fridge for months after opening.

Farmed
photograph to come — from twenty years of markets, farms and kitchens

How it's made

The production method varies by style. Fermented sauces like sriracha and Tabasco involve mashing fresh chillies with salt and ageing the mixture in barrels for weeks to years, then blending with vinegar. Simpler hot sauces are made by cooking chillies with vinegar and straining. Pastes like sambal or harissa are produced by grinding fresh or dried chillies with oil, garlic, and spices into a thick consistency. All are typically heat-treated or acidified to ensure preservation.

Nutrition (per 100g)

Energy 11kcal
Protein 0.5g
Carbs 1.4g
Fat 0.4g
Fibre 0.3g Sugar 1.3g
Mass Distribution

1 tsp is about 4.7 g.

What it costs the planet (per kilo)

Carbon ≈0.91kg
Freshwater ≈185.91L
Land ≈0.77m²

≈ Estimated — worked out from a category-typical value further up its supply chain. Where this comes from →

Where it comes from

In the kitchen

Used as

table hot condiment

Goes well with
chicken egg seafood rice bean
Classic dishes
  • Buffalo Wings
  • Shakshuka
  • Hot Sauce Chicken

Keeping one at home? Track yours in your cubud →

Where this data comes from

Nutrition data from

USDA

How it was calculated

SR Legacy

Full credits, licences, and methods: the sources page →

Where to next

made fromChilli Pepper, product goes well withchicken goes well withegg goes well withrice goes well withbean shares a sourceChilli Peppers shares a sourceChilli Seasoning Blends
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