Homemade Red Chilli Paste Recipe (Cili Boh) (2024)

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This homemade red chilli paste recipe is going to save you a lot of time. It’s a handy, basic recipe that can be used as an ingredient in so many East and South East Asian recipes.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Cili Boh

This is the one we always used, bought from the wet market in Holland Drive.

• batu = stone (pronounced ba – too)
• giling = roll (gee – layng)
• cili = chilli pepper, the way it’s spelt in Malay

When my grandma made it at home, she’d add onion, garlic, sugar and sometimes candlenuts. This produces a richer and more aromatic cili boh than the basic one. And that’s the version I’m giving you here.

Homemade Red Chilli Paste

So many East and South East Asian recipes call for a teaspoon of chilli paste here, a tablespoon there. So, rather than grinding it up from scratch each time, make this red chilli paste up and keep it in the fridge.

You’ll have a time-saving ingredient whenever you need it. And your final dish will have a deeper, more well rounded flavour than when using fresh chillies.

When I first wrote this recipe back in 2013, I gave you the recipe for the long and slow cooking paste, as I’ve always made it. But over the years, I’ve had so many requests for a quicker paste and using fresh chillies that now,

you get 2 recipes for the price of 1 when you visit this page, a quick version and a low and slow!

Red Chilli Paste 1

This is a speedy one that we cook for the briefest of times, using dried or fresh chillies, resulting in a light flavour and aroma, retaining much of the freshness of the chilies, garlic and onion used, with a hint of sweetness from the onion.

This quick red chilli paste is best used as a cooking ingredient, as it very much retains the raw taste of the ingredients, namely the chillies, onions and garlic.

If you want, you could make a basic cili boh here. Just use the chillies, salt and oil.

Chilli Paste 2

This is indispensable in my kitchen. The key to this second homemade chilli paste is in the frying of the paste. In Malay, we call this tumis and the longer the cooking time, or the tumis time, the deeper the aroma and flavour, and the darker the colour.

For this second version, you want to cook for a minimum of 1 hour. I like to go for an hour and a half to two, if I have the time.

You can use either fresh red chillies or dried ones in this second paste. Dried chillies will always give you a deeper aroma and flavour, however, as we are cooking for a long time here, that doesn’t really matter.

In this long cooking one, the pot you cook it in makes a difference to how dry your paste will be. In a wok, given the wider nature of the cooking pot, your chilli paste will dry up quicker and will most likely need more water.

How to use either Chilli Paste

• as a marinade (think roast and barbecue – meat and vegetables)
• it makes a great sandwich flavour filler or a spicy spread
• use our red chilli paste as a condiment with rice, noodles and so on
• in Singapore and Malaysia, we use it as a cooking ingredient for stir fries, omelettes, pies and tarts
• jazz up the good old mayo and any salad dressing

It is a pretty spicy paste, so when using this homemade chilli paste in another recipe, a small amount goes a long way.

Recipe Ideas

Some recipes that you can use the red chilli paste in, include the examples below. If the recipe calls for a chilli paste, you can do a straight swap. Otherwise, substitute the chilli paste here for the fresh or dried chillies the recipe calls for.

Homemade Chilli Paste Ingredients

The Chillies

Fresh chillies – use whatever variety you fancy, as long as they are red, for a red chilli paste. For a green chilli paste or sambal, take a look at the gallery below.

Dried chillies – this recipe started out life as how to make homemade chilli paste from dried chillies! So, use what you fancy, as long as they are not the smoky type like chipotle. Smoked dried chillies have their own place, like in the Chipotle Paste.

Here’s my global affiliate link for getting dried red chillies on Amazon, if you love online shopping, like me!

Candlenuts

Completely optional, most people don’t use them. But they do enrich our cili boh.

Candlenuts are an essential cooking ingredient in some parts of South East Asia. They are used to enrich and thicken dishes, which is its purpose in this homemade chilli paste. Click here to read more. I can only get them online, so am happy to use macadamia nuts which are an almost perfect substitute.

Failing that, a smaller number of cashew nuts will do just as well. You could do away with the nuts completely if you like, you will still get a deep flavour from the long cooking of the second paste.

Here’s my global affiliate link for getting candlenuts on Amazon.

Variations on our Red Chilli Paste Recipe

You could add even more flavour to this homemade chilli paste by adding any of the following:

• Tomatoes
• Dried Shrimp
• Shrimp paste

TIP: A chopper, blender or food processor is a must for this as all the ingredients are processed together, then fried.

How long will this Chilli Paste Keep?

If you store it in the fridge in a clean jar, this flavoured cili boh will keep for a week in the fridge. To extend this to about 2 weeks, cover our red chilli paste with a layer of vegetable oil, about 1 cm depth.

You can also extend its shelf life in the following 2 ways:

Canning/Preserving our Chilli Paste

1. Stick with this recipe and use the pressure canning method. Preserved this way, your paste will last a good 2 years.
2. Or you can add the juice of 2 limes to this recipe to increase the acid level, and give it a water bath. Increasing the acid level in the chilli paste is in keeping with food safety advice on the preserving low acid level foods like chillies and onions. The lime juice does add a tang to the recipe, but let’s face it, lime juice makes so many recipes taste better! If you are increasing this recipe, be sure to increase the amount of lime juice proportionately too.

Tip: Once the chilli sauce is made, it’s important to save and label it so it’s easier to distinguish and use in the future. The best way to differentiate your sauces is to put a label on the bottle, or if you’re a creative person, you can design your own labels and patterns for custom die-cut stickers to add to your sauce bottles. It makes it easy for you to find and also makes your sauce bottle look beautiful, reflecting your personality and imagination. This is especially important when making it for friends.

Beacuse guess what? It makes the perfect gift for a foodie friend.

More Chilli Pastes and Condiments

Head on over to the Chilli Page for more recipes, as well as articles on the odd chilli that I’ve grown over the years. Like the following:

Images by LinsFoodies

Have you shared yours with me yet?