The classic Monkey Gland Sauce recipe

The Monkey Gland Sauce is a South African classic. Served with steak in many restaurants, and even available from your supermarket it's one of those essential sauces. The store-bought version has lots of flavour, but can’t win from this homemade recipe that tastes like actual tomatoes, instead of flavourings. It’s worthwhile making your own version, that doesn’t only make the perfect steak sauce, it can also be used for your burger or in a chilli con carne (or chilli NON carne!).

Many Monkey Gland Sauce recipes use 3 sauces to make the recipe: tabasco sauce, chutney, and Worcestershire sauce. This recipe only keeps the Worcestershire sauce, and replaces chutney for apricot jam, to add flavour and sweetness without all the other additives. The heat in this sauce is added by actual chillies. 

 Ingredients:

• 1 large or 2 small onions, chopped
• 2 large cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp freshly ground coriander
• 4 jam tomatoes, quartered and deseeded
• 50g tomato puree
• 5 sundried tomatoes, roughly chopped
• ½ C apricot jam
• 2 tbsp Worcester sauce
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 2 dried chillies, chopped
• 1 tbsp brown sugar 

Method:

1. Heat a pot over medium heat and add some oil. Sauté the onion for 5-8 minutes until it has a golden colour, and then add the garlic and coriander. Sauté further for a minute.
2. Add all other ingredients, and bring to a simmer.
3. Simmer for 45 minutes over low heat (use a heat diffuser to make sure simmers gently, but doesn’t burn).
4. Take off the heat, and leave to cool for 15 minutes.
5. Pour into your OmniBlend jug, and place the lid without the lid cap on the jug. Hold the lid with a kitchen cloth to allow the heat to escape. Start blending on low speed.
6. Blend until you’ve reached the right consistency, blending it as chunky or smooth as you like it.

For this recipe we used the OmniBlend V – 1.5lt narrow base model, and it would also work well with the 2ltr jug.

Photo by Lefteris kallergis on Unsplash