Matt Bray, Author at PepperScale

Spicy Blueberry Salsa

Blueberries and jalapeño sound like a mistake until you taste them together. The berries bring a dark, mellow sweetness, the pepper brings a bright green snap, and the gap between the two is the whole point of the salsa. It takes fifteen minutes, there’s no …

Spicy Paloma Cocktail

by Matt Bray

Everyone reaches for the margarita, and the paloma is the drink they’re missing. It’s grapefruit and tequila with a squeeze of lime, it’s genuinely more popular than the margarita in Mexico, and it takes about two minutes to build. A shot of jalapeño simple syrup …

Spicy Mango Avocado Salad

by Matt Bray

Here’s a light summer salad with a real kick to it. Sweet mango and creamy avocado go over fresh greens, a blended habanero dressing goes over the top, and the whole thing comes together in about fifteen minutes. Serve it as an appetizer or a …

Chamoy substitutes: tamarind concentrate, li hing mui powder, umeboshi paste and plum sauce

What’s A Good Chamoy Substitute?

by Matt Bray

Hot sauce is the wrong bottle. Chamoy is fruit, salt, sour and chili all at once, and the swaps that work are the ones already doing three of the four. Here’s what to reach for, and how much to use.

What Is Chamoy?

by Matt Bray

Chamoy is a Mexican condiment that tastes sweet, sour, salty and a little spicy all at once, usually sold as a thick reddish-brown sauce made from dried fruit, chilies, lime and salt. It gets drizzled over mango, squeezed into a bag of chips, and swiped around the rim of a michelada glass. Here’s where chamoy came from, what’s actually in it, how spicy it really is, how it differs from Tajin, and what to do with a bottle once you have one at home.

Homemade Chamoy

by Matt Bray

Chamoy is the sweet-sour-salty sauce that shows up on fruit cups, mangonadas, shaved ice, and michelada rims, and the homemade version beats anything bottled. Dried apricots and dried hibiscus simmer down with chiles de árbol into a deep red sauce that leans salty and sour instead of candy-sweet. It takes about forty minutes, most of it hands-off, and it keeps about a month in the fridge. Here’s how the ingredients work together, how to adjust the heat and the sweetness, and what to put it on.

Chili Crisp Uses: What To Do With It Beyond Eggs And Noodles

by Matt Bray

You bought the jar, spooned it over an egg, and then it sat there. Here’s what else chili crisp is good for, from cooking with it to using the oil alone.

What’s A Good Chili Crisp Substitute?

by Matt Bray

Ran out of chili crisp? The closest stand-ins are the condiments built the same way. Here’s what to reach for, what to skip, and how to fake it from your pantry.