Sweet and Spicy Mango Sauce (Mango Sour)

When spring rolls around, I always make a big batch of this sauce. I don't know why spring but I always do. Maybe the warm feel of the sun on my skin makes me feel at home. Who knows? But by then the mangoes are starting to show up more at the store and they are so much fresher and they ripen so perfectly thanks to the newfound warm temperature.

But I think I just feel alive with spring and I am so much busier in the kitchen. This is when I usually whip out a lot more of those homemade dishes that I grew up with. It is also when I can start to find those exotic ingredients like culantro, guavas, passionfruit, and starfruit.

Having grown up with several mango trees in our yard, I love mangoes any way I can get them. Green, ripe, any variety, raw, cooked, savory, or sweet. I will take it all. But even if you don't love mangoes, I promise this sauce will be something you will make an exception for.

Sweet and Spicy Mango Sauce (Mango Sour)

This sauce is the salsa to your everything. It is so easy to make and you can use it as a dip for chips especially root vegetable chips or green plantain chips. You can pour it over foods like chickpeas or you can drizzle it over eggs balls or yucca/cassava fries. I love that that this sauce is so versatile. And if you aren't familiar with any of these foods then you are seriously missing out.

I grew up on this stuff. There isn't a house in the country that doesn't make and eat this. It is perfectly sweet and tangy and spicy all at the same time and can elevate any simple dish to something delicious.

It's so easy to make and freezes well. so let's take a look at the ingredients:

INGREDIENTS and substitutions:

• mangoes – this is obvious and not somethign we can substitute but when you oick your mangoes, you want to select unripened (green) mangoes that are very firm when squeezed. They will not bruise or develop soft spots when you squeeze them because they are not yet ripe. I personaly like mangoes that are now about to turn ripe. Maybe I have seen enough mangoes in my life to know when that is but usually their skin is all green still and they are firm but where the stem was attached is a bit brown. If the stem area is green then it is usually a younger and greener fruit (which still works).
  
• garlic - This is where we season mangoes by adding the pungent flavor of garlic. If you don't love the strong taste of garlic, then you can dial back how much you use or you can usue elephant garlic which is much more mild. I hight recommend you use fresh garlic. There is so few ingredients in this recipe that it is important to the flavor to use fresh ingredients.
  
• wiri wiri peppers - Now if you aren't west indian then this one will stump you but that's ok. You can use half of a habenero or less depending on your taste but if you are not fond of burning off your tongue like I am, then you can add cayene powder at the end with the salt to season to your liking. But if you are using real peppers then it's ideal to the look, to use red habeneros and not blending it with the other ingredients but instead using a fork to mash it and then add it back to the blended mangoes. This will give speckles of red throughout the sauce and differenciate it it from othet similiar yellow sauces like a lemon or pineapple curd.
  
• water - the only purpose the water serves is to cook the mangoes, garlic and peppers through and to bring the sauce to your desired consistency. When you are cooking, if you notice that your water is cooked down and the mangoes are still hard then you can add more water. In fact, you can add water at any stage of the process; when blending if it is too thick or even when you are about to eat it and you want to thin it a bit.

Let's get on to this recipe. Let me know if you like it and how you decided to use it.