Chicken Rice Ball Chilli Sauce

Recipe 4 / The Basics

Chicken Rice Ball Chilli Sauce

This is the sauce that makes or breaks the meal. Every restaurant in Melaka has a version and no two are identical. This recipe produces a balanced, bright, ginger-forward sauce that works well with both steamed and roasted chicken. Once you’ve made it a few times you’ll start adjusting it to your own preference, which is exactly what you should do.

YieldAbout 200ml (enough for 4 to 6 servings)
Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time5 minutes
Total Time15 minutes
DifficultyEasy

Ingredients

  • 8 to 10 fresh red chillies (medium heat variety, seeds removed for milder sauce)
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 3cm piece fresh ginger, roughly chopped
  • 2 tbsp fresh lime juice or calamansi juice (about 4 calamansi)
  • 3 tbsp chicken stock (from your poaching liquid, ideally)
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp sesame oil

Method

  1. 1
    Blend
    Combine chillies, garlic, and ginger in a blender or food processor. Blend to a rough paste. Add lime juice, chicken stock, sugar, and salt. Blend again until fairly smooth but with some texture remaining. A completely smooth sauce loses some of the freshness of the chilli. Aim for a consistency that coats the back of a spoon but isn’t completely liquid.
  2. 2
    Taste and adjust
    This is the most important step. Taste the sauce and adjust. More lime for brightness. More sugar to balance heat. More salt for depth. More ginger for warmth. More chilli for heat. The balance you want is bright and sharp from the lime, warm from the ginger, with chilli heat building gradually rather than hitting immediately.
  3. 3
    Finish
    Stir in the sesame oil. This adds a background fragrance that rounds out the sauce without being identifiable. Taste once more and adjust if needed.
  4. 4
    Rest
    The sauce improves after 30 minutes of resting. The flavours integrate and mellow slightly. Make it before you start cooking the chicken if possible.

Cook’s Tips

  • Calamansi juice is the more traditional choice and gives a slightly different flavour from lime. If you can find fresh calamansi (they’re widely available in Asian grocery stores), use them.
  • The heat level depends entirely on which chillies you use and whether you remove the seeds. For a family-friendly version, remove all seeds and use milder long red chillies. For a proper kick, keep some seeds in and use bird’s eye chillies mixed in.
  • Using real chicken stock in the sauce is what separates a great version from a generic one. The stock adds a savouriness that you can’t fully replicate with water.
  • The sauce keeps in the fridge in a sealed container for up to five days. It gets slightly milder as it sits, which some people prefer.
  • If you want to get closer to the Heng restaurant version that locals praise, add a small pinch of white pepper and slightly more ginger than the recipe calls for. The extra ginger is where a lot of the complexity comes from.

End of Recipe 4