Sha Cha Chicken Curry

This Sha Cha Chicken Curry has to be one of my greatest inventions yet. Sha cha sauce is a condiment normally used for Chinese stir-fries or hot pots, but I decided to use it as a base for coconut curry and it turned out amazing.

If you like curries, I think you'll like my lamb leg curry as well.

In a lot of ways, sha cha sauce is like the satay sauce of Chinese cooking, so the idea of putting it in a curry isn't too far-fetched. This recipe reminds me of Malaysian curry but a little more funky and complex because of the sha cha sauce.

You might think the sha cha sauce would overpower the entire curry but it actually doesn't at all. It really just sits in the background and uplifts all the other flavors. I'd say you can smell it more than you can actually taste it.

I made this for meal prep last week and my wife was just as excited as curious to try it. Spoiler alert: she loved it! She grew up eating sha cha sauce in a Cantonese household but never had it in a curry before. She even asked that I make it for her parents next time they came over.

Key Ingredients

Sha cha sauce: If you are not familiar, this is a fermented condiment made from oil, garlic, shallots, Chinese brill, and dried shrimp. In my opinion, it is a bit of an acquired taste. I didn't like it growing up, but now I quite enjoy it. It has a "dried seafood taste" and a little bit of funk from the fermentation. The most popular brand is the one in the silver tin (pictured below).

Curry powder: You can use any yellow curry powder you like, but I highly recommend getting a new package if yours is getting old. I have found that curry powder loses a lot of its potency after just a few months from opening. I have made curries with old curry powder, and the difference in flavor is quite substantial.

Coconut milk: This is the base of our sha cha chicken. For curries, I always recommend getting the full-fat version (or coconut cream) because it will make the consistency much creamier. But feel free to experiment, especially if you're on a low-fat diet.

Peanut butter: I think peanut butter works really well in this curry because the flavor of the sa cha makes it taste similar to chicken satay. Another benefit is that the peanut butter will naturally thicken the curry. Alternatively, you could also blend some peanuts in a food processor or spice grinder.