Chilli Oil, Chilli Paste or Hot Sauce: Which One Your Recipe Needs

The short answer

Chilli oil carries heat in fat, so it coats and enriches.

Hot Sauce is thinner and usually higher in acidity, so it lifts and sharpens at the end. 

Chilli paste is concentrated and low in water, so it builds flavour into a dish during cooking.

Palestinian Shatta can potentially do all three 😉

Choose by what job you need doing: coating, building, and/or lifting!

Chilli oil

Chillies infused into oil, sometimes with aromatics, sometimes with crisp fried bits suspended in it.

Because the heat is carried in fat, it spreads across everything it touches and softens on the palate rather than hitting sharply. It adds richness as well as heat, which is the reason it works so well on noodles, dumplings and anything starchy — the oil does half the work of a sauce.

Use it for: noodles, dumplings, rice, roasted vegetables, pizza, fried eggs. Anything where a little fat is welcome.

Not for: dishes that are already rich or creamy. Chilli oil on something creamy tends to slide off the palate rather than cut through it.

Chilli paste

Chillies reduced to a thick, concentrated paste. Harissa, gochujang, sambal oelek and doubanjiang all sit here, despite tasting nothing like each other.

The defining feature is low water content, which means it can go in early without watering down the dish, and it holds up to heat and time. The above pastes are what you use when you want the chilli woven into the dish rather than sitting on top of it.

Use it for: stews, braises, marinades, soup bases, anything roasted for more than twenty minutes.

Not for: finishing. Raw paste on a finished plate tends to taste flat and slightly claggy.

Hot sauce

Thinner, pourable, and almost always higher in acidity. This is usually provided through vinegar or naturally through fermentation.

The acid is the point. It makes hot sauce a finishing condiment: added at the table, where the sharpness cuts fat and wakes up whatever it lands on. It is also why hot sauce tends to disappear when cooked. Boil it and you drive off the volatile aromatics and are left with generic heat.

Use it for: eggs, sandwiches, fried chicken, tacos, grilled meat and fish, anything fatty.

Not for: long cooking. Add it at the end or at the table.

So where does Shatta fit?

Shatta is a Levantine chilli condiment made from fresh chillies and peppers that are salted and fermented, and it sits somewhere between paste and hot sauce depending on how it is made.

Our Shatta Hot Sauce is loose and pourable - you know, like a hot sauce - with the acidity coming mostly from fermentation brine, but with added vinegar for extra flavour.

Our Bird's Eye, Jalapeño and Habanero Shatta's are thicker and more spoonable, closer to a paste in texture. Traditionally they are meant for finishing rather, but we have seen many of our community use Shatta as an ingredient in their cooking too - pasta sauces, dry stir-fries, marinades, and even sourdough bread!

Shatta Jam is different again — the sweetness slows the heat down and makes it work in places a straight chilli sauce would not, like on a cheeseboard.

In reality, all of our Shatta's are mainly finishing condiments. The fermentation gives you brightness, and brightness is something you add at the end. However, there is no one way to use Shatta - enjoy it how you see fit!

Quick reference

Can you substitute between them?

• Paste instead of hot sauce: loosen it with lemon juice or vinegar, or it will sit heavily on the plate.

• Hot sauce instead of paste: add it late, and accept you will get heat without depth.

• Chilli oil instead of either: it will work as a finish but adds fat, so pull back elsewhere in the dish.

• Shatta for chilli oil: add in extra virgin olive oil for a similar experience to chilli oil

None of these swaps are like for like. If you keep one of each, you rarely need to make any substitutes. 

Browse our Shatta below 👇