Get Your MasterChef on With This Homemade Chilli Oil Recipe

If you’re a lover of spice, like me, you probably find yourself burning through hot sauces and chilli oils at an alarming rate. That would likely be because you add the stuff to every single meal you enjoy throughout the day.

Eggs? Pop it on. A tuna sandwich? Load her up. Pasta for dinner? You betcha. To me, a meal rarely feels finished if it doesn’t have a little heat added to it.

So, when I saw that former MasterChef contestant Khanh Ong had shared a chilli oil recipe to Instagram, I was intrigued.

He too recommends adding this cocktail of spices to everything, including eggs and tuna. Ong shared in his Insta post that this little recipe is:

So easy, and perfect as a homemade gift for mates if you’re that type of person (psycho though) or start a side hustle, sell it at your local market like every other person (shady).

So if you’d like to recreate this concoction at home, here’s how.

Homemade chilli oil recipe

What you’ll need

In the post, Ong wrote that the ingredients include:

• 5 star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick (cassia bark even better)
• 2-4 tbsp of Szechuan peppercorns (how much numb do you want?)
• 3 Bay leaves or 4
• A tsp cloves
• 3 cloves of garlic peeled
• 2 shallots, peeled
• 350-500 ml of a neutral oil like grapeseed, veg, peanut
• 1 – 1 1/2 cups of Szechuan chilli flakes or if you can’t find that then the normal chilli flakes from your supermarket is fine, it just won’t be as hot.
• Salt to taste

Directions

• Basically, you’re mixing everything together on a stovetop and letting it brew into a sexy, spicy sauce. The full rundown of what to do is written out in Ong’s Instagram post.

Check it out here:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Khanh (@khanhong)

Once you’ve made a batch of this stuff, Ong says you’ll likely have it on hand for months. So, stop wasting your time on store-bought basic chilli oils and hot sauces – make yourself a never-ending batch that you can slather onto every meal, no dramas.

I know I’m going to give it a shot.

If you want to keep cooking, check out this recipe we shared a while back for Vegemite Dumplings – also from Khanh Ong. It’s one of the many standout recipes from Ong’s cookbook A Gay Guy’s Guide to Life, Love, Food.