If your family is the type that loves dishes when they have a spicy kick to them, you're certainly in good company. Although the very first version of hot sauce was incredibly simple , things have gotten more complicated over time. Today, there are a ton of different varieties, and if you love hot sauce, you should definitely start experimenting with chile pastes.
Chile pastes are great in a variety of dishes, from sauces and soups to dips. They're basically made from ground chile peppers, and while there are all kinds of pastes with different flavor profiles, we're going to talk about sambal. It is a Malaysian paste that — although it comes in many, many varieties — is a fermented chile paste that comes in a range of spice levels with a lime kick.
One of the most distinctive varieties is sambal belacan, a salty, flavorful paste that's sometimes just called belacan. It's popularly used across Southeast Asia, and it's pretty neat stuff. Even though it has a complex flavor of spice, heat, salt, and citrus, it can be made with just three ingredients.
Chiles and lime are a given, of course, but the third one is unexpected: shrimp paste. What does sambal belacan taste like, and how is it made? Talking about what sambal belacan tastes like is tricky because there are so many varieties. It does, however, tend to be on the saltier side compared to other chile pastes, and that's entirely because of the shrimp paste — there's generally no extra salt added to the sauce.
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