Recipes featuring Chicaoji Sauce

These are recipes that people have come up with the use Chicaoji Sauce in one way or another. It’s a very versatile sauce because it has all the flavors: sweet, tart, salt, bitter, savory/umami PLUS the medium heat of chipotles (smoked jalapeño chillies).

Annie’s Chicaoji Yogurt Dressing with Pan Roasted Veggies

| Randall Waugh

Ingredients:

Pan Vegetables

  • 4 cups vegetables – such as yams, potatoes, beets, squash, summer squash, parsnips, onions, carrots, garlic, celery… whatever.
  • 2 Tablespoons of your preferred cooking oil
  • 2 cups chopped greens (kale, chard, spinach, collards, orach etc.)
  • ½ cup chopped parsley (or more…parsley is really good and good for you.)

Chicaoji Yogurt Dressing

  • 1 cup plain yogurt
  • 2 Tablespoons Chicaoji Sauce

This recipe is extremely flexible. Basically, it’s about pan roasting whatever you want to eat, steaming some greens on top of it and then eating this with Chicaoji Sauce & plain yogurt. The quantity of food depends on how many people you are feeding and how big a skillet/pan you have.

  • Cut up vegetables (I like to just cut roots in half or quarters and put a flat side down. RW)
  • Put them in skillet with the oil and cover with lid. (The lid helps to steam things but isn’t absolutely necessary.)
  • Cook these in the oven or on top of the stove. Cooking time and heat varies depending on how soon you want to eat and how finely you cut up the veggies. High heat/finely chopped is faster and low heat/coarsely chopped is slower…. Medium heat….well…you get the idea. (I like to cook root vegetables a long time on low-medium heat until they blacken, i.e. “Cajun Style”. RW)
  • Mix Chicaoji and yogurt in separate bowl.
  • Toss chopped greens on top of other veggies and continue to cook for a couple of minutes, according to taste. Some people prefer raw greens. I like to cook them 4-5 minutes so that they wilt but are still bright green. Dark greens are interesting because their flavor evolves the longer they are exposed to heat.
  • Serve up the vegetables and greens.
  • Scoop on the Chicaoji Yogurt Dressing.
  • Sprinkle on parsley
  • Serve with bread, tortillas, crackers, chips or whatever you prefer.

Jon’s Chicaoji Salmon Tagine

| Randall Waugh

Here’s a recipe for Salmon Tagine from Jon P. over in Texas.

“Coat salmon generously with Chicaoji and let marinate for 30-60 mins. Do this on the counter to let the fish come to room temp, but if you go longer than 30 mins you might want to do it in the fridge for the first while and then take it out.

Ingredients:

  • Salmon
  • 2 Tablespoons oil
  • 1-3 medium Shallots, (depending on size) finely chopped
  • Couple cloves of garlic, crushed
  • Pinch of saffron, ground in mortar & pestle
  • 4-6 small or 2 large preserved lemons (removing any seeds!), coarsely chopped

Into stovetop tagine,

  1. add oil and heat on medium flame,
  2. add shallots, sautéd half until clear
  3. Add crushed garlic and continue cooking on low heat for a couple of minutes
  4. Grind a large pinch of saffron in a mortar & pestle and mix well into shallot/garlic mix and keep cooking on low
  5. Add preserved lemons
  6. Cover with tagine lid and let whole mixture cook on low heat for another 15-20 mins
  7. Let stand until you are ready to cook fish (I usually make this first and then reheat to temp for fish once I’m ready to cook and serve)
  • Heat tagine with mixture in it to just slightly higher than medium heat.
  • Once things are sizzling immediately add fish, skin side up, so that non-skin side is directly on top of the mixture and cover.
  • Let cook for 4 minutes, then
  • flip fish so skin is down, moving as much of the shallot/lemon mixture to the top of the fish,
  • cover and cook another 5 minutes.
  • Turn off heat and let stand another few minutes—this sort of depends on how thick the fish is!! I generally choose pretty thick pieces and then let stand another 3-5 mins.”

“Tagine” definition

Megan’s Chicaoji Cream Sauce

| Randall Waugh

Megan from Lopez Island shared this recipe and I’ve quoted her below:

“So the original recipe I found online but used different ingredients of course so I changed it and ran with the change bc I loved it sooooo much!!! so I can only take credit for my version of it but yes you may use my name if you would like, thank you for asking.

I call it

Chicaoji Cream Sauce

  • 1/2 cup Mayo
  • 2-3 tablespoons of Chicaoji
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk

I know that all sounds soo odd together but it’s amazing. I make a full jar of it anytime I make it so I double if not more that recipe. Also, I don’t measure it out anymore. But it’s easy to tweak if you like it spicer or sweeter or more tang just adjust each portion as the individual prefers.
Hope that all makes sense.

I use it on veggies (both as a dip or drizzle), on salmon (plain or teriyaki), on chicken, in wraps or sandwiches, on my egg breakfast sandwiches or burritos. I just love it on everything!!!!
Hope you enjoy it!!! I’d love to hear what you think if you try it.”

I shared Megan’s recipe in the Chicaoji Newsletter so she received her free 12 oz bottle of Chicaoji.

Chicaoji Dip

| Randall Waugh
  • 1 cup – Cream cheese, yogurt or sour cream
  • 2 tablespoons Chicaoji -(probably more but start with 2 Tbs)

Blend together. Eat with bread, chips, crackers, vegetables, meat, or pretty much anything..

Smoked Salmon spread

| Randall Waugh
  • Smoked Salmon
  • Vortex Cream cheese/feta spread
  • Chicaoji

Mix together to taste. Eat with bread, chips, crackers, vegetables, eggs or a spoon!

Bloody Mary

| Randall Waugh
  • 1  part Chicaoji
  • 8 parts of your usual Bloody Mary recipe

A professional bartender and friend came up with this ratio. She said that most people have their own Bloody Mary recipe or they buy pre-made mix off the shelf. There isn’t really any point in trying to give people a recipe that they already have. She said with her beautiful North Carolina accent, “Just tell them to do their regular Bloody Mary thing using 8 parts of theirs and 1 part of yours.  They’ll figure it out.”

This doesn’t really require much of an explanation.