Worcestershire sauce recipes can be intimidating. An authentically homemade Worcestershire sauce requires a rather long fermentation process, and most of us aren’t that patient. It requires anchovies. Do you eat anchovies? (Maybe you do. They’re nutritious little buggers.) It requires far more attention than I’d like to give something as simple as a condiment.
And store bought Worcestershire sauce? Have you read those labels lately? Until recently, it was practically impossible to find one at your supermarket that didn’t contain high fructose corn syrup. Can you spell d-i-s-a-p-p-o-i-n-t-m-e-n-t? Seeing a traditionally fermented, flavorful condiment reduced to such levels of mass-produced mediocrity is enough to make me cringe.
Maybe even shed a tear.
Enter my recipe for an Easy Homemade Worcestershire Sauce. You don’t have to do any long ferments or cooking. You don’t need any wild or unusual ingredients. It’s not “authentic,” but it’s a fantastic substitute when a recipe calls for Worcestershire Sauce and you don’t want the HFCS.
I’ve seen a few of the easier homemade Worcestershire sauce recipes out there, and almost all of them are missing the single most important ingredient in a good Worcestershire sauce — anchovies. I understand their desire to be “simple.” Hey, even I want a simple Worcestershire sauce recipe!
But, how hard is it to stir in some anchovy paste? Or, in the case of my own version of an easy homemade Worcestershire sauce, some Thai fish sauce (which is fermented from anchovies)?
I also know that a real Worcestershire sauce would contain tamarind paste, but (unlike Thai fish sauce, which is usually stocked right next to soy sauce) that’s an odd ingredient that most grocery stores don’t carry. A decent substitute for the distinctive sweet & sour tamarind is a combination of black strap molasses and lime, so that’s what I went with here.
Hope you enjoy!
Easy Homemade Worcestershire Sauce Recipe
(makes 3/4 cup)
The Players
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar (where to find raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar)
- 2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce (where to find Thai fish sauce)
- 2 tablespoons honey (where to find raw honey)
- 1 tablespoon molasses (where to find REAL black strap molasses)
- juice of one lime
- 1/2 tsp ground clove
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- 1/4 tsp garlic
- 1/4 tsp of chili powder
(where to find organic, bulk spices)
The How-To
Mix all ingredients together in a blender, or shake thoroughly in a dressing bottle!
That’s it. See what I mean about this being an easy recipe for homemade Worcestershire sauce?
(photo by FotoosVanRobin)
I cannot wait to try this!! I LOVE worchestershire sauce and miss it terribly!! THanks so much!!
You are welcome. I’ve been meaning to post this for more than a year now! I need to be more organized than I am.
This is awesome! Thanks for posting!
Yum! How long does it keep in the fridge? I don’t use a ton of W-sauce but it is so important to have on hand–I am just wondering how much to make at a time.
I’ve never had it go bad, and I’ve had mine in the fridge for at least a month before…
Great! My question exactly!
Hot stuff! I’ll give this recipe a shot. On the topic of naturally-fermented fish sauce might I also recommend Red Boat Fish Sauce.
Have you tried to doing an overnight ferment? Just wondering how that would be compared to traditional long fermentation process. Thanks for the post, been thinking about how to make W.Sauce without the junk.
I’ve never tried to ferment it because I usually whip this together right when I need it for a recipe.
It seems like you could stir in a tsp. of living whey or a little bit of a veggie starter culture and let it sit out for a quick ferment. It’d probably be slightly more sour and less sweet, but it’ll be full of probiotics!
May I pin this on my pinterest? I’m so excited about homemade worcestershire. I’ve looked up recipes before but they seemed way too complicated. This is perfect.
Of course you can pin it to Pinterest. You can pin anything there!
If you don’t follow me yet, I’m on Pinterest here.
I just wanted permission due to the news lately regarding the fuzziness of the legality of pinterest policies as it relates to copyright.
Thanks for granting!
http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Pinterest_and_legal_issues_Read_this_before_you_pi_11048.aspx
Oh, well in that case, you would have to ask the original photographer, whose photo credit is listed in the photo credit portion of this post.
Personally, I don’t care how Pinterest’s terms of use is worded. The images shared on Pinterest are low-res, web-quality images that can’t be used for hardly anything artistic at all. They’re slightly larger than thumbnail, but still nowhere near print quality.
Futhermore, if you to hold the liability for that pinned photo rather than Pinterest, it would mean that the person who owns the photo’s copyright had the time, energy, and TONS of money it would take to take legal action against you. How likely is that?
As a person who publishes copyrighted content, all I ever do if someone reproduces my blog (or something similar) is send them a DMCA take down notice. Then they take it down, and no actual criminal or legal involvement is necessary. All this to say, if someone *really* didn’t want their photos to be pinned, they wouldn’t sue you first and ask questions of you later. They’d contact you and ask you to remove the pin. You would, and you’d apologize. Then, that would be that. There’s really no need to worry about liability.
Those are great points!
Actually, if the images are copy righted then the owner can send you a bill for the use. http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/cease-and-desist-letter-received-from-getty-images-5053.html General blog owners generally are so happy to have the traffic driven to their blog that they don’t care about it being “pinned” and possibly having the image reused with out permission. But you need to be careful not to pin copyrighted images that are sold.
Thank you for this! I haven’t used Worcestershire sauce in years for the very reason you said in the post. I will use this recipe. Thanks, again!
We have a good source for tamarind paste- do you have a suggestion how much we might substitute for the molasses and lime? Thanks!
I’d start with 1 tsp and taste it, possibly working up to 1 tbsp.
and what about anchovy paste instead of the fish sauce? I’ve had that in my pantry for a while and nothing to use it in -
so much easier than the one I use! There are spices in it it took me 6 months to find locally! But husband is allergic to fish so I guess I am stuck with the hard one!
Try replacing the Thai fish sauce with umeboshi paste, found in health food stores or food coops. Will have to determine amounts by trial and error. Two brands appear to be free of additives: Emperor’s Kitchen and Eden Foods. (Are we allowed to put in brand names?) You should be able to tweak the easy recipe to omit the fish rather than use a more complicated recipe with loads of expensive and hard to find ingredients. Good Luck!
Thanks so much! I used to use Worcestershire sauce all. the. time. Then they added HFCS! yuk! I’m allergic to corn.
I’ll still look for Tamarind sauce/paste b/c my family loves Pad Thai (or whichever Thai noodle dish uses it). You’d think it wouldn’t be so hard to find in Los Angeles, with all the Asians, but I haven’t found it recently.
When I lived in California I only found tamarind paste in Indian and Middle Eastern stores, not Asian. You may want to try there.
Try latino stores as well. Tamarind paste is made from tamarind pods for the Mexican beverage Tamarindo. You might also find the dry tamarind pods and make the paste from the pods yourself.
I live in a small East Coast city, but found tamarind paste in an Indian grocery rather than an Asian one.
Totally gonna try this one. Thanks so much for sharing.
How long can you store it?
nevermind, just saw the same question above.
I’ve never had mine go bad, and I’ve stored it in the fridge for at least a month before using it all up.
I will try this recipe, but can you tell me the way I would use tamarind paste, as that is much easier for me to obtain that black strap molasses. I would not even know where to obtain black strap molasses, probably online.
Thanks!
Please see my response to Breezy, above.
This is awesome! Well done!!!
I am so excited to find this. Thank you. Thank you. My son is allergic to soy and corn. I haven’t been able to find commercially prepared Worcestershire Sauce that doesn’t contain one or the other.
Hi, just making this recipe right now but not sure if u mean minced garlic, or garlic powder?
Thank you! Super excited to find this recipe. I gave up on Worcestershire Sauce about a year ago because I couldn’t find a clean version anywhere. This is awesome
Thank You! Finally a recipe… That will help prevent MSG poisoning which
store bought Worcheshire Sauce contains… and as dangerous as high fructose corn syrup! Can’t wait to try the recipe.
Hi, Kristen! I wanted to let you know that I’m sending my readers your way for this fabulous Worcestershire sauce recipe. I use it in my wonderfully juicy and tender Grilled Skirt Steak w/Balsamic-Apricot Marinade recipe which I just posted today. Thanks for your terrific and EASY recipe! Blessings, Kelly
If I need to go out and try to find “Thai fish sauce” (something the average cook usually doesn’t have in their cupboard) to make a Worchesterhire Sauce substitute in a pinch, I might as well just pick up some Worcestershire Sauce to begin with.
Well, this isn’t meant to be a substitute in a pinch, but a healthy homemade version that isn’t full of highly refined ingredients like high fructose corn syrup.
Awesome, did’nt have molasses, so used brown suger. Tastes like slightly sweet Worcester.
Thanks
Brown sugar would be sweeter! Glad you liked it.
Great recipe! I can’t wait to try it since I’ve avoided commercial Worcestershire Sauce for years because of questionable ingredients. I’d like to learn your source for real blackstrap molasses, but checked the link and couldn’t find it. Would you provide that information?
Many thanks,
Hi there, love your site! Thank you, God bless you for being a channel for wisdom and amazing truths to flow thru!
I wanted to comment about the tamarind paste, it is sure to be available in most any Indian store (India Indian
and every town is sure to have at least one Indian store in it (okay, not every but almost). Hope this helps someone who wants actual tamarind paste– and hopefully it is all natural, now that I haven’t checked so please do.
I live in the Atlanta area and we have lots of Asian farmers markets. I have easy access to tamarind paste and I want to use in the Worcestershire sauce instead of limes.
So, how much tamarind paste should I use instead of the limes?
Okay, I’m tired of waiting so I will try to go ahead and make it using tamarind instead of lime juice. I’ll go ahead and squeeze the lime juice to use that as a measure of tartness for the tamarind.
I want to use tamarind in order to get it the closest to the real thing as possible.
She addressed a very similar question earlier in the comments section, so I would start there and modify as needed.
Yes, thanks. I was able to get tamarind concentrate at a local Asian store. About 1 tblspn works well.
Wow – just made this to spruce up my ho-hum beef pot roast, and I’m pleasantly surprised by how good this is! I was worried it’d be too sweet with all the honey, but the lime juice works well to counteract that. Mine doesn’t look as dark or thick as the picture (probably because I only had regular molasses), but I’d definitely make this again!
my husband brought home a bottle & due to [toxic] ingredients, i had to throw it away, so wasteful, but better for my family.
thanks for sharing your wisdom with us!
I’M SO HAPPY THIS DOESN’T HAVE SOY!! Thank you! This seriously opens up so many other options for sauces/condiments that I can make without icky stuff or foods I can’t eat- makes my day!