This Two-Ingredient Strawberry Sambal Salsa Will Blow Your Mind
My kitchen produces two things every year that my friends love: sambal and fresh fermented salsa. It didn’t occur to me to combine the two until I looked into a barrel of freshly picked strawberries, which clearly only had one day left. On a whim, I grabbed my sambal and added crushed strawberries and I fell in love.
The resulting salsa is, of course, hot, depending on how hot your sambal is. My sambal is a garlic chili sauce—a thick mixture of pepper, garlic, and salt that is fermented into a wonderfully delicious umami mass. I dip summer buns (gui cuon) in it and it’s wonderful.
Chili garlic sauce takes time to mature and ferment if you make it yourself, so you won’t have time this year, but you can just take a bottle of Huy Fong and add strawberries to it.
How to make strawberry salsa sambal
Peel the strawberries and shake off the dust. If they are not dirty, do not wash them. I know it seems counterintuitive, but what we really want is natural yeast on the outside of the fruit, so washing it doesn’t help our fermentation. To be clear, this salsa is still delicious even if it doesn’t ferment, so don’t worry if you don’t see signs of fermentation.
All you need to make Strawberry Sambal Salsa:
- To remove stems: strawberry peeler
- Air lock so you don’t have to burp the jar: lids and springs for ball fermentation.
- Sauce to Start: Huy Fong Chili SauceF
Break your berries with your chosen tool. Feather, potato masher – even a fork will do. You want a thick, juicy, dark red puree. Start adding garlic chili sauce a tablespoon at a time, stir and taste. Keep doing this until you reach your desired heat level. I used 1 pint of strawberries for 3 tablespoons of garlic chili sauce. That’s it, just two ingredients.
Place this in a jar with an airlock attached and leave it on a counter out of the sun at temperatures below 70℉. Leave it overnight on the table and then transfer to the refrigerator. These strawberries are very fragile, so at best you have two to three days to eat this spicy fruit concoction. But these will be glorious days.
Of course, it’s great on tortilla chips (take blue corn, purple salsa on blue is very inspiring). But I encourage you to take a piece of swordfish, or halibut, or some other thick, flaky fish, and use it as seasoning for the grilled result. I beg you to put some of this on a piece of fresh melon. I beg you to put it on the smoky, hot brat. And it will really rock your world… but add a tablespoon or two to the whipped cream and then use that whipped cream on the cake. (Please.)