The iconic Peanut sauce is quick to prepare from store cupboard essentials. Use it to dress a winter salad with or without noodles, as a dip, or with kebabs and raw vegetables. This perfect dressing creates a quick lunch or light supper from nothing.

There are a thousand and one recipes for this sauce, complex and simple, coming from Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian and Vietnamese kitchens. I always feel nervous about writing down this iconic recipe and worry that its originality will get lost in translation. However, the actual ingredients are not readily available for many of us, so we need a little improvisation.

There are notes for two versions one is cooked, and one is blended, but the ingredients are very similar.

Peanut Sauce Ingredients

Many authentic recipes would use tamarind paste, which you can replace with lime juice if difficult to source. I also like to use orange juice as the sweet element rather than sugar, purely down to taste preference. If you find an excellent quality pure roasted peanut butter, use it; if not, roast and grind your own peanuts because it tastes much better. I sometimes add fresh mint or coriander, which is good with noodles.

Authentic Asian recipes cook the sauce, giving it a much richer complex flavour, especially if you roast your peanuts. Modern adaptations lose this step; I have given notes for both.

Choose Your Sauce

The Spicy Peanut Dressing, the simpler version, adding sesame as a flavour (more Thai influenced), is perfect for a quick noodle salad. But it is highly adaptable, so change the consistency according to your recipe; pourable to dress noodles and salads and thicker for the dip. The spicy dipping sauce, a cooked sauce, is ideal for grilled meats and raw vegetables.

After writing down my recipe (which has always been based on James Mayson’s Street Food from around the world, 1998 Absolute Press. Bath. UK.) I read a great many peanut sauce recipes.😁 My thanks, therefore, rasamalaysia, templeofthai and Epicurious for their guidance and inspiration.

For more dips and sauces recipes, click here.