BBQ SAUCE | Thursday, 3 September 2020
My customer made a special order for a whole batch of BBQ sauce with a taste profile that is oil-free, low salt, preservative-free and with no added sugar for health reasons. As usual, the base is caramelised onions: I sliced 18 onions and put them in my Maillard reaction chamber with some balsamic vinegar, ACV and thinly sliced limau kapas. Then applied Boyle’s Law for 45 minutes to hasten the reaction. The acidity also catalyses the Maillard reaction. Why 18 onions? That’s the maximum capacrty of my HD2139 PPC reaction chamber. After one round on “bake” mode, the onions had reduced in volume and became a soggy slop. The reduced volume allowed me to add the thinly-sliced flesh of three pineapples, which otherwise wouldn’t have fitted the reaction chamber. I also added one tin of cream-style sweetcorn, one tin of tomato purée, a bottle of chilli sauce and a whole bunch of spices including 1 heaped teaspoon of chilli powder, 1 heaped teaspoon of whole (not ground) aniseed (jintan manis), 2 heaped teaspoons of chaat masala, and grated ginger. I then set it on “bake” mode again for another 45 minutes for the Maillard reaction to do its magic on the pineapples. I opened the pressure chamber after it had cooled down and will keep it on “keep warm” with the lid off until the whole batch has reduced to the right consistency, stirring occasionally to encourage rapid evaporation. Basically, we need to prevent a dry crust from forming at the top layer which would impede evaporation. The guar gum and xanthum gum in the chilli sauce will aid in getting the right texture and consistency. The chilli sauce also has a little salt in it but it’ll be greatly diluted by everything else.
If the customer had wanted it hotter, I would have added half a kg of chilli boh instead a bottle of chilli sauce. And for “super pedas” a heap of red chilli Bangla.
With this combination of tomato purée, chilli sauce, grated ginger, aniseed, chaat masala and sweetcorn, I aim to create a flavour profile that meets my customer’s requirement for a sauce that is spicy and savoury, yet not too pedas. With the small amount of chilli powder I had used, the taste profile will not be much affected; its more for the colour. If I want to enhance the colour further without adding any heat, I’d add some saffron, which is water soluble. As this sauce is oil-free, a water-soluble natural colouring works better than something oil-soluble. The chunky bits of pineapple, sweetcorn and limau kapas enhances the taste experience.
More of my low-fat whole food plant-based recipes may be found here:
http://bit.ly/WFPBbyAzlan
Original of the video here
BBQ Sause Recipes
BBQ Chicken Recipes
BBQ Pork Recipes
BBQ Beef Recipes
BBQ Turkey Recipes
