Peanut Sauce Recipe

This peanut sauce recipe is bursting with flavor! Perfect for dipping, it works for spring rolls, veggies, lettuce wraps, and more.

Looking for a flavor-packed dipping sauce? This peanut sauce recipe is simple, creamy, and absolutely irresistible! It’s savory, sweet, salty, sour, and a little spicy all at once: perfect for dipping spring rolls, lettuce wraps, shrimp, a veggie tray, or anything that needs a flavor boost. It takes just a few minutes to whip up, making it a stand-by in our kitchen. Keep this one in your back pocket for anytime you need a killer sauce!

Ingredients in this peanut sauce recipe

Peanut sauce is traditionally an Indonesian sauce made with roasted peanuts and spices, served with dishes like satay, gado-gado, and more. This peanut sauce recipe is a spin that’s designed for Western kitchens, using peanut butter, garlic, ginger, and a bit of Indonesian hot sauce, sambal oelek. (Here’s a recipe for a traditional Indonesian sauce from an Indonesian-born recipe author!) It comes together in just a few minutes. Here’s what you’ll need:

• Natural creamy peanut butter: This recipe is customized for peanut butter with no sugar added. But you can use any type of peanut butter: standard makes a slightly sweeter sauce.
• Soy sauce or tamarI
• Rice vinegar
• Honey or sugar
• Sambal oelek or chili garlic sauce
• Fresh ginger
• Garlic

How to make peanut sauce: a few tips

This recipe is as simple as stirring together a few ingredients! There are just a few tips to note about how to make peanut sauce:

• Peel the ginger with a spoon. Ginger root is notoriously hard to peel with a vegetable peeler: it’s knobby and the skin is tough and stringy. But peeling it with a spoon works like a charm.
• A Microplane grater makes quick work for grating the ginger and garlic.
• Use just enough water until the sauce comes together. Stir all ingredients together, then use just enough water so that it comes together. It all depends on the peanut butter, but typically we use 3 to 4 tablespoons.

For the hot sauce

The hot sauce in this peanut sauce recipe is optional, but it adds more than just heat! Our favorite here is sambal oelek, which adds a funky nuance to the flavor. The 1 teaspoon specified in the recipe below makes for a very mild peanut sauce. If you’d like, add more to make a spicy peanut sauce! Here are a few options for the hot sauce:

• Sambal oelek: This Indonesian chili sauce is our top choice here; it’s made of chili peppers, garlic, ginger and lime. It has a chunky texture and little to no sugar.
• Chili garlic sauce: It’s similar to Sambal oelek but with a thicker texture, made with more ingredients and more of a garlicky flavor.
• Sriracha: You can also use Sriracha here! Sriracha is a hot sauce that originated from Thailand made of chile peppers, vinegar, garlic and sugar

Storage info

This peanut sauce recipe lasts 2 weeks refrigerated. However, keep in mind that the texture becomes solid when cold. Since it’s mainly made of peanut butter, it solidifies in the refrigerator like a jar of peanut butter would.

Before serving from the refrigerator, allow the peanut sauce to come to room temperature. If it is still very thick, whisk in ½ teaspoon or so of warm water until the sauce comes to a creamy consistency.

Ways to use peanut sauce

This peanut sauce recipe is perfect as a dipping sauce for many types of foods, like spring rolls, lettuce wraps, and more. It’s not designed for use with pasta (try these peanut noodles instead). Here are a few ways to use it:

• Spring rolls like Vegetable Spring Rolls
• Lettuce wraps like Easy Lettuce Wraps
• Shrimp like Perfect Sauteed Shrimp or Grilled Shrimp Skewers
• Chicken
• Raw veggies like carrot sticks, celery, cucumber, pepper strips, or anything on a veggie tray
• Drizzle over mango salad like this Mango Salad with Lime
• Add to a roasted sweet potato like these Sweet Potatoes with Thai Peanut Butter Sauce

More peanut butter recipes

Got a jar of peanut butter to use? Here are a few more great recipes starring this creamy, nutty puree:

• Try sweet and simple Peanut Butter Energy Balls
• Go for 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies
• Make easy Peanut Butter Dip
• Blend up a Peanut Butter Smoothie

01

Easy Energy Balls

02

Peanut Butter Dip

03

Peanut Butter Smoothie

04

3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

This peanut sauce recipe is…

Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, dairy-free, and gluten-free (with tamari).

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