Szechuan Plum Dipping Sauce…Spicy, Sweet and Peppery

Need a dipping sauce for your vegetable dumplings, a spicy condiment for your steak or just a spicy fruit sauce to mix in with your Greek yogurt for dipping those sweet potato fries?

This picante plum sauce is perfect for so many uses!

If using larger plums they will probably be easier to pit, just by slicing open and removing each of the pits. My plum tree here in Sicily is a variety of plum that has quite a bit smaller but very sweet plums. It’s impossible to slice and pit them because they stick very tightly to the pit.

After washing the plums I put them in a large pot and add a little less than a cup of water. Bring to a boil then simmer for 15 minutes or so until the plums split and start to break up. Cool until you can stick your hands in the mix, remove 6-8 cups at a time into a strainer that is on top of another clean pot to catch the juice and prepare to be up to your elbows in red plum sauce as you carefully squeeze out all the pits, one by one. A bit time consuming but worth it in the end!

Cooling while I wait for the pitting to begin…

Here we have it, the pitted pot of plums!

Assembling the ingredients and adding all the good stuff!

I followed regular canning procedures here, sterilized my jars and lids in boiling water, filled them with the very hot sauce, processed them in the canner for 10 minutes, with a 5 minute resting period still in the canner with the heat off after the 10 minutes were up, removed them carefully from the canner and waited with crossed fingers for all the jars to seal with a pop.

I ended up with 11 jars, various sizes, of Szechuan Plum Dipping Sauce and still had plums left so I made 5 large jars of Plum Sauce sweetened with a bit of honey and vanilla. I think I am set for a year or two with plums!

Oceans to Olives

Yields 5 - 6 12 oz jars or 10 - 11 mixed size jars

Szechuan Plum Dipping Sauce…Spicy, Sweet and Peppery

The biggest time consumer in this recipe is pitting the plums. If you have bigger plums and the pits cut out easily you will be able to skip the first cooking step to soften the plums and remove pits.

2 hrPrep Time

40 minCook Time

2 hr, 40 Total Time

Save Recipe

Print Recipe

Ingredients

8 pounds plums, pitted and chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2-3 inch chunk of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2-4 chili peppers (hot), stemmed and chopped
1 cup water
2 cups red wine or apple cider vinegar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup coconut aminos

Use 5 Spice Powder OR the following ingredients

1 whole (3-4 inch) cinnamon stick or 1 tsp Ceylon cinnamon
4 whole star anise pods
1 teaspoon szechuan peppercorn
1/2 teaspoon whole fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

Instructions

Prepare boiling water canner and sterilize 10 to 12 mixed size jars by boiling them for ten minutes. Wash lids and rings and bring to a simmer in a separate, small saucepan of water. Turn off heat and allow jars, lids, and rings to sit in hot water until you need them.
In a heavy-bottomed, non-reactive pot, bring plums, water, onion, garlic, ginger, and chili peppers to a boil and then reduce to a simmer.
Add to plum mixture sugar, vinegar, spices, and coconut aminos and continue to simmer until plums are falling apart and the mixture is quite soft, about 20 minutes.
Remove cinnamon stick and pass mixture through a food mill in batches into another non-reactive saucepan. or use your hand held immersion blender and that way you keep your same pot. I sometimes skip this step if I want the sauce to be chunky and pulpy but we like it done with the immersion blender also. It makes it a smoother and a bit thinner sauce.
Return the mixture to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook until the texture is thicker and saucy.
Remove from heat and ladle into prepared jars, leaving a half inch of headspace. Wipe the rims of the jar lids with a clean kitchen or paper towel and seal.
Place the sealed jars back into the canning kettle. When all jars are added, make sure that the water level clears the jar lids by at least one inch. Add more water if necessary, and, over high heat, bring the water back up to a boil. Once the water boils, set a timer for ten minutes.
After ten minutes, turn off heat, and allow jars to sit in water for five additional minutes. Then, using a jar lifter, remove the jars to a cooling rack.
Once jars have reached room temperature, remove rings if you are using them and test that all lids have sealed properly. In Italy, the lids are mostly one piece screw on lids so no ring to remove. If any have not sealed, store them in the refrigerator. Label and store sealed jars in a darkened, cool place.

Notes

One of our favorite ways to use this sauce is by mixing a few spoonfuls with plain Greek yogurt and having a sweet and spicy, creamy dip for our Baked Sweet Potato Fries!