
Piri Piri Sauce
London, United Kingdom · View all recipes
Overview
Bird's eye chillies blended with red pepper, garlic, oregano, bay, lemon and vinegar into a hot sauce. No single country is claimed, and there is a good reason for that. **The source's origin claim is wrong and needs correcting.** It says piri piri originated in the Caribbean. It did not. Chillies as a genus came from the Americas and were carried worldwide by Portuguese and Spanish traders after 1492, but the piri piri chilli itself is what those chillies became after they were planted in Portuguese southern Africa, chiefly Mozambique and Angola, where the small, fiercely hot bird's eye variety developed. The name is Swahili: *pili pili* simply means pepper, doubled for emphasis. That history is why the sauce belongs on this site rather than in a European section. It is a genuinely African product that travelled back to Portugal, not a European one imported into Africa. Its association with Portuguese and South African restaurant chains has obscured that. The source also says the English call it piri piri while the Portuguese call it peri peri. Both spellings are used in both languages; the variation is transliteration, not nationality. The method mentions onion, which appears nowhere in the ingredients.
AFN Heritage Note
Piri piri, also spelt peri peri, is a small, very hot chilli that developed in Portuguese southern Africa, principally Mozambique and Angola, from chillies brought from the Americas. The name comes from the Swahili pili pili, meaning pepper. The sauce made from it is used across southern Africa and Portugal.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Roughly chop the red bell pepper and the chillies.
- 2
Put all the ingredients into a blender or food processor.
- 3
Blend to a purée.
- 4
Taste and adjust the salt and seasoning.
- 5
This makes about 2 cups.
- 6
Use straight away, or store in an airtight container in the fridge.
Africook’s Notes
- Wear gloves. Bird's eye chillies are extremely hot and the capsaicin transfers readily to skin and then to eyes.
- The red bell pepper is doing volume and sweetness work, not heat. It is what makes this a sauce rather than a paste.
- Adjust the chilli to taste, bird's eye chillies vary enormously between individual pods.
- The vinegar and lemon are preservative as well as flavour. Do not reduce them if you want the sauce to keep.
- It improves after a day or two in the fridge as the garlic and oregano infuse the oil.
- It works as a marinade as much as a table sauce, particularly on chicken and prawns.
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