A mildly spicy peanut sauce based on the ingredients of a favorite store brand, but without any junk and easily made at home!

Spicy peanut sauce is pretty much a staple around our house, mostly for how it makes a meal easy: make some noodles or rice (or use lettuce wraps), stir-fry some veggies, pour the sauce over everything and dinner’s ready. Quick and flavorful – it’s a very good thing (um…do you think that’s trademarked?).

Peanut sauce is one of those items where the store-bought product doesn’t necessarily have a lot of junk-type ingredients in it, it’s just really expensive! Even in Asian markets, it is not cheap.

After trying several recipes and being disappointed (some were just like putting straight peanut butter on your noodles!), I stood in the aisle of the store and wrote down the ingredients of the brand we liked in the order listed, then came home and fiddled with amounts until it passed the taste test.

And pass, it did! This is SO good and we really like being able to adjust it to the spice level we like. It takes just minutes to make, too. I’m so happy to have this recipe to add to our other pantry basic recipes.

How to make Spicy Peanut Sauce

Here are the simple ingredients you’ll need to make this recipe: soy sauce, peanut butter, honey or brown sugar, rice vinegar AND apple cider vinegar, fresh ginger, garlic, and Sriracha sauce – the ingredient that adds the spiciness to the peanut sauce.

You’ll need to use grates fresh ginger for the best flavor. I used to be afraid of fresh ginger – do you peel it? Where do you keep it? How do you prepare it? Besides, it looked weird. So I would mostly use powdered ginger (I know…).

But this Microplane grater (which I love, love, love) has changed my ginger ways. It’s simple to just keep a knob in the freezer, cut off a chunk when needed, peel it and grate it frozen. I’ve found the key to easy grating is to do it while the knob is still mostly frozen, it doesn’t grate as nicely if it’s thawed.

Measure all the ingredients in a blender. You don’t actually need a blender, it just makes it really quick and smooth – if you don’t have a blender, you can use a food processor or a whisk.

Adding the Sriracha sauce at the end to taste for spiciness. I like to use about a couple teaspoons, but to be honest, I usually just squirt some in the blender, since we like it spicy.

Whirl it all up for a few seconds and voila! Spicy peanut sauce for your pantry and quick meals like stir fries, lettuce wraps and noodle salads. I hope you like this as much as we do!

Click the arrow for the printable recipe + more pantry staple recipes you can try!