Scallions, onion, tomato and cilantro chopped fine and left in vinegar, lime and oil with as much chilli as you want. Nothing is cooked. This is what sits on the table next to an empanada in Colombia.
The sauce that comes with the empanada
If you have eaten a Colombian empanada, you have eaten this. The fried corn pastry arrives with a small pot of something green and red and loose beside it, and that is ají.
It is not a bottled hot sauce and it is not guacamole. It is chopped raw vegetables sitting in vinegar and lime with chilli in it, somewhere between a salsa and a dressing, and it is spooned over rather than dipped into.
The heat is a matter of household preference and there is no standard. Some jars will take the roof of your mouth off and others are barely warm.
Chop it, do not blend it
Everything gets chopped as finely as your patience allows, by hand. This takes ten minutes and it is the whole labour of the recipe.
A blender is faster and it ruins it. What comes out is a thin green purée, and the texture that makes ají work, the small distinct pieces of scallion and tomato that sit on top of an empanada, is gone.
Fine is important as well as by hand. Coarse chunks slide off whatever you put them on.
Three hundred grams of scallion
The proportions look strange until you understand that the scallion is the sauce. Cebolla larga goes in by weight while everything else goes in by the piece, and at 300 grams it outweighs the onion and the three tomatoes together.
Everything else is seasoning around it: vinegar and lime for acid, oil for body, cilantro for its own flavour, a teaspoon of sugar to take the edge off the vinegar, and chilli for heat.
It is better tomorrow
Made and eaten straight away, raw scallion has a harshness to it. A day in the fridge softens that and the flavours come together into one thing instead of several.
The vinegar keeps it for weeks, which is why this is a sauce you make in a jar rather than a portion. It also gets slightly hotter as it sits, so a sauce that seemed mild on the first day may not be on the third.
Where to put it
- Colombian empanadas — what this sauce exists for.
- Traditional arepas — the other thing it goes on.
- Colombian hogao — the cooked sauce, for comparison.
- Grilled beef — spooned over at the table.
Colombian Ají FAQ
A fresh, uncooked sauce of finely chopped scallion, onion, tomato and cilantro in vinegar, lime and oil, with chilli to taste. It is not a smooth bottled hot sauce: it is closer to a loose relish, and it sits on the table beside empanadas, arepas and grilled meat.
Yes. This is what a Colombian empanada is dipped in. The sauce is spooned over or the corner of the empanada is dragged through it, and for many people it is as much a part of the dish as the empanada itself.
Exactly as spicy as you make it. The recipe calls for one hot pepper and allows black pepper or chilli powder instead, so the heat is entirely under your control. Add it gradually and taste after mixing.
No. Blending turns it into a purée and loses the whole point, which is a sauce with visible pieces of scallion and tomato in it. Chop everything as finely as you can by hand.
Because it is the base. Three hundred grams of cebolla larga against one onion and three tomatoes is not a typo: everything else in the sauce is built around the scallion, which is why it goes in by weight.
Weeks in a jar in the fridge. The 150 ml of vinegar is doing preservation as well as seasoning. It is also better on day two than in the first hour, because the raw scallion softens and loses its edge.
Empanadas above all, but also arepas, grilled meat, chicharrón, soup, and rice. In a Colombian house the jar tends to live in the fridge door and come out at most meals.
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
- 300 g scallions (finely chopped)
- 1 onion (finely chopped)
- 3 tomatoes (finely chopped)
- 150 ml white vinegar
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 hot pepper (or ground black pepper, or chilli powder)
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- ½ cup cilantro (chopped)
- A pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
Notas
Instructions
- Chop the scallions, the onion, the tomatoes and the hot pepper as finely as you can. The size of the pieces is what this sauce is judged on.
- Put them in a bowl with the white vinegar, the olive oil, the lemon juice, the cilantro, the salt and the sugar.
- Mix everything together, then taste and adjust: more chilli if it is too mild, more vinegar or sugar to balance it.
- Store it in a jar in the fridge, which is also what makes it keep.
- Serve with empanadas, or with whatever you like.
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