Peanut sauce, addictively simple

Peanut sauce is not something I grew up with of even had before we moved to Canada. I still remember the first time we experienced it. It was in a small restaurant in Toronto, and our friends ordered sticky rice with peanut sauce. I still remember rolling balls of rice and dipping them in the super tasty sauce.

Little did I know how simple it was to make the goodness. With the invention of electric pressure cooker, AKA Instant Pot, making sticky rice amounts to a 2-minute job.

Peanut sauce, on the other hand, is a 5-minute stove-top job. While this may not be a fully traditional recipe, it produces an outstanding result, reliably.

Template for making peanut sauce

• Sauté the base: finely chopped onion, minced ginger, minced garlic - any subset will do. Salt and pepper to speed up the cooking.
• Add 2 cups of liquid: coconut milk, chicken stock, bean-cooking liquid, water - any of those will do
• Optionally add a bit of miso to up the umami factor
• Optionally, if you are not using coconut milk, add a bit of coconut oil.
• Add two heaping soup spoons of smooth unsalted peanut butter. If you use the salted variety, you'll need to be more careful about controlling saltiness
• Add some heat and flavor: 1 TBS of thai curry paste, any kind, 1/2 TBS harissa, sriracha or another hot sauce
• Add 1 TBS soy sauce, 1 TBS fish sauce
• Optionally add 1 TBS sesame oil
• Bring to boil while stirring over medium to medium high heat. 
• If it is too thick, add more liquid. If it is too thin, add a bit more of peanut sauce.
• Taste, adjust the seasoning if you wish.
• Eat, and try to control yourself. 

Our usual peanut sauce

• Sauté onion and garlic, sometimes ginger with salt and pepper
• 2 cups of kelp water or regular water or bean liquid, whatever we have
• A small dollop of miso
• 2 heaping soup spoons of smooth unsalted peanut sauce
• Curry paste (or harissa and sriracha when we are out of curry paste)
• Soy sauce and sesame oil