Kweichow Foods Hot Garlic Sauce
I picked this sauce up at the Ranch 99 Market off of I-10 here in Houston. Having never been there before, it was a special treat and I was like a kid in the candy store going through all the spices and miscellaneous stuff with labels that I could not read nor understand. The Ranch 99 market is an Asian food super mall of sorts here in Houston. You can buy everything from outdoor furniture to fish balls. Coincidentally, it’s a great place to get a good deal on meat and super fresh fish.
The sauce aisle in the store was the size of a super Walmart aisle – the choices went on for miles. I was on a mission to find soy sauce and something like Sriracha for a dish I was making when I came across this gem. $1.99 for a jar of hot garlic. My eyes lit up like I had struck gold. My hot wife just rolled her eyes and instructed me to stay away from her after eating it.
So I brought my gem home and it’s sat in the fridge until that “chinese food” craving kicked in. You know the one, that craving that hits in the middle of the week when there’s nothing in the fridge and you’ve had a long day. So we ordered some Chinese food and I set upon my task of digging into some hot garlic.
When you open the jar – you are hit with a wave of garlic which isn’t surprising. It’s thick and consistent with a garlic puree. You can see flecks of chiles and pieces of garlic. There is no sesame oil related smell as you might expect from it being the 3rd ingredient.
I like a little food with my sauce as you can see from this picture. This sauce is disappointingly not hot. Taste wise, it reminds me of Sriracha – but without the nasal clearing heat. It’s got great garlic flavor – and I slathered it on my garlic chicken. Yes, garlic and more garlic. Flavor wise – garlic. That’s about it – maybe a slight hint of the “Chili” on the label.
I would recommend you get yourself a jar of this – but other then Ranch 99 market, I have no idea on where you can get it. The manufacturer website was not working and a trip to the Googler didn’t give me any information that I could pass on to you. Maybe a reader will know where to get this. But if you do happen across this is a random Asian foods market like I did, pick up a jar or three. This will make a great marinade or base for an Asian sauce if you don’t want to slather your food with it.
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I am a big fan of this sauce. It was always hard to find even with plenty of Asian markets here in NJ. The Kweichow web site does not show it. I suspect it is no longer available. I may contact them to make sure..In our house there is no such thing as too much garlic.Besides, I like the fact that the ingredients list contains no gums,dyes or other junk.
I love this sauce, and its counterpart without garlic even better. I buy it at Tiongsan Market in La Trinidad, Benguet, here in the Philippines. It reminds me of the hot chili and soybean paste of Korea.
One problem I do have with it is that some times there is black pieces of what seems to be sand (Very hard) in it.