First time making 'sambal belacan' with no proper guideline except a recipe from mother-in-law, leaving me with 'burning fingers for 5 hours!!! It was not painful but the burning a tad torturing especially when you needed the fingers to non-stop do household works. Most torturing was when you needed to wash things. Those burning fingers felt like in hell. No kidding! Any advice what to do next time to avoid burning fingers? BUT, the successful appetising end result of the sambal was ooh-la-la. Satisfied! Worth it!
Sambal belacan is what we say in Malay language.
Sambal = chillies paste
Belacan = shrimp paste
Sambal belacan = chillies with shrimp paste⤵️
Very easy to make only abit time-consuming if you use the traditional way, using mortar and pestle. Halfway through, I had to ditch the heavy thing and took out my blender. Mother-in-law if patiently used mortar and pestle, the chillies paste turned out nicer. But my hubby tasted this one with blender, he said it tasted the same. Yayyyy! ✌️
Ingredients needed
I wanted a super easy recipe. So MIL mentioned the easiest was with these ingredients. Red chillies, belacan and calamansi lime.
Recommended: Get fresh chillies, belacan from Penang and the bigger size lime. If you prefer even hot burning ones, you can add in the bird's eye chilli. I do not have photo of the belacan packaging because I got it from my mother-in-law, just the amount I needed.
Let's start!
Firstly, wash clean the chillies, cut off the head and tail, de-seed some or de-seed all, or left them seeded. It depends on the level of spiciness. My husband loves very spicy. I love not so. So I de-seeded half.
The recipe calls for 6 red chillies to 10 gram of belacan. I took 36 gram of belacan, so around 20+ red chillies (plus minus according to size and your tasting feeling). Chopped them into smaller sizes.
Toast the belacan by putting it on hot pan until it broke apart and the house was filled with the aroma (some liked it, some hated it.). My brother came out from the room and asked "What's the rotten smell ah?" hehehe...
Start pounding the chillies.
Needed some patience and muscles strength, calling all the biceps and triceps to work for me.
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.
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After 20 minutes pounding, my patience level was zero, and my muscles gave way. So I took out life-saver blender and blended all the chillies..
Tada!
I didn't add in lime into this big batch as my husband said the sambal belacan could be kept longer in fridge without the lime. We only scooped out two tablespoons of the sambal and added in one lime for our dinner. Very yummy as extra condiment.
Pour the rest into a clean dry glass jar.
I kid you not, I would sometimes just scooped a teaspoon and eat it, for stress reliever. It was that good! If you like shrimp paste, this is what you can make in big batch, else just 'sambal' for you, without the 'belacan'.