I love exploring with ingredients and sauces to make dips and here is my favorite Asian mango dipping sauce that my friend Vivian and her husband from J-Petal are addicted to.

• Prep time: 20 minutes
• Cook time: 20 minutes
• Serving amount: 1 quart

Ingredients:

• 1 block 500 gram Palm Sugar*
• 1 cup Louisiana dried shrimp
• 3 Tbsp shrimp paste with bean oil
• 3/4 cup Viet Huong fish sauce
• 3/4 cup water
• 3 Tbsp Gochujang Hot Pepper Paste
• 1 Tbsp Korean Soybean dipping paste
• 1 cup fried shallots
• 2 Tbsp minced garlic
• 3 Tbsp minced ginger
• 1 Tbsp lemongrass powder
• 1 Tbsp galanga powder
• 1 Tbsp homemade chili paste*

*Note: 1 block of 500 gram of palm sugar is about 3 cups shaved palm sugar. My homemade chili paste is a combination of habanero, Thai dragon, ghost, and Carolina reaper chili peppers blended together with vinegar. I bought one pound of the Louisiana dried shrimps during Vietnamese Tet festival. The Asian markets usually sells small amounts of imported dried shrimps in the refrigerated area. I recommend buying the premium quality if you must buy the imported dried shrimp.

Serve the dip with hard, firm, green, crunchy, and sour green mangoes. The flesh would be whitish in color. June and July are the seasonal time when green crunchy sour mangoes are available in Florida. I was excited to be able to hoard a load of these green mangoes for a good deal at $1 for 2 mangoes!

Direction:

1. Shaved the block of palm sugar. It should measure to about 3 cups.

2. Prep and measure out all the ingredients.

3. In a Kitchen Aid chopper, blend the minced garlic and minced ginger, dried shrimp, and fried shallots together until it’s all blended well. (If you are using fresh minced lemongrass rather than the powder, add the minced lemongrass at this time.)

4. I used the HexClad 12-inch pan to cook the sauce. Roast the blended dried shrimp mixture with the shrimp paste in bean oil, lemongrass and galanga powder for two minutes on medium heat. Then add in two tablespoons of water and cook for three minutes on medium high heat. Stir the mixture occasionally.

5. Pour in the water, fish sauce, and shredded palm sugar. I used three cups of shredded palm sugar, but find about 2.5 cups suit my taste buds better.

6. Stir the sauce until the palm sugar dissolves. Turn heat to medium low to a light simmer. I added about 1 tablespoon of my homemade chili paste which contains a mix of habanero, Thai dragon, ghost, and Carolina reaper chili peppers.

7. Discard the scum or foam.

8. Continue to simmer the sauce for about ten minutes until it to thickens to your liking. The sauce will continue to thicken as it cools down so don’t let the liquid or water dries out completely in the sauce. The sauce should still be able to drip down from the spoon when you lift it up.

9. Let sauce cool down and store it in containers in the fridge. This recipe makes about one quart in which I store it in small containers for my friends and family.

Serve with super hard (like a rock) firm green crunchy and sour mangos. For this pictorial, I’m using Bailey and Manila mangoes I bought from fruit vendors on Merritt Island, Florida.

Behind the scenes:

I tried to document this pictorial early in the morning while kids were still in bed, but then my little man woke up running out into the kitchen demanding to help me. I had to make up something quick so I put the ingredients onto the dining table and had him take each item down onto the floor to help me set it up for a picture of all the ingredients. He also helped me measure out ingredients using measuring cups and spoons.