Satay sauce is an exceptionally delicious sauce that accompanies marvelously various dishes. It’s also surprisingly keto-friendly — once you skip the sugar and replace it with a natural sweetener or omit altogether. Quick and easy, this 5-ingredient sauce takes less than 5 minutes to prepare! Serve this flavorful condiment with chicken skewers, seafood, pork, vegetables, or as a delicious dip.

How to prepare the The Easiest Satay Sauce

This is so quick, easy, and delicious sauce that I bet you will be preparing it many times! Keep it in your repertoire of easy keto sauce and dip recipes that you can whip up quickly to your family or when entertaining.

Preparing this keto-friendly satay sauce is easy: just add all ingredients into a saucepan, heat over high heat all the time mixing until thick and piping hot — and that’s it!

You can use crunchy or smooth peanut butter, whichever you like. I recommend sprinkling lots of chopped salted peanuts on top for a stunning presentation and extra crunch. This sauce is a fantastic way to use peanut butter in a savory dish!

This sauce uses fish sauce. If you are allergic to fish — or want to make a vegan version of the satay sauce — check the section “How to vary the recipe” further down in this post to check the substitutions.

You can easily adjust the spiciness of this dish with the curry paste. I’ve used Thai red curry paste because, in my opinion, it provides the best taste and just the right amount of heat. If you are unsure how spicy your curry paste is, it’s good to start with a small amount and add more if needed.

When heating the mixture, don’t let it boil. Once it’s piping hot, it thickens quickly. To prevent it from getting too thick, remove the saucepan immediately from the heat once you’ve reached the desired thickness.

But let’s take a look at how to prepare this sensational sauce:

Pour 1 cup (240 ml) coconut milk into a saucepan.

Add 2/3 cup (160 ml) unsweetened peanut butter.

Add 2 tablespoons fish sauce.

Add 1 1/2 tablespoons (or to taste) Thai red curry paste.

And finally, sweeten the sauce to taste with liquid stevia. I use 10 drops stevia glycerite.

Heat the mixture over high heat, all the time stirring along the bottom…

…until piping hot, thick, and smooth. Don’t let boil!

Transfer into a serving bowl.

Sprinkle an ample amount of chopped salted peanuts on top for crunch and great looks.

Serve immediately.

How I came up with this keto-friendly satay sauce recipe

This is actually the to-go recipe of mine that I developed several years ago. You can find this recipe from my Low Sugar So Simple book. The Finnish version of this sauce you can find from my upcoming Finnish keto book “Järkevä ketoruokavalio” that will be launched next month. And actually, you also find a vegan satay sauce version from my other Finnish book “Kasvisruokien KETO-käsikirja,” there is a recipe for a satay-filled avocado. Most likely, I will put that recipe to my upcoming English keto-vegan book as well, it’s to good. Anyway, I wanted to post this particular satay sauce recipe here on my blog, too — as I consider it one of my best and easiest recipes!

I remember I did my first satay sauce experiments in 2014 — or at least I have written down notes from those. The first experiment was pretty disastrous. From my notes, I can see that I had used 4 oz (115 g) crunchy peanut butter, 1/2 cup (120 ml) coconut cream, 1 teaspoon gluten-free soy sauce, 1/4 teaspoon onion powder, and 3 drops liquid stevia.

I had mixed everything together and heated the mixture in a microwave oven for 30 seconds. And that didn’t work at all! Instead of smooth and tasty sauce, the result was a flop: the taste was bland and dull, but even worse, the sauce separated. I found out that onion powder made it taste dull. Maybe microwaving caused it to separate?

Soon, after some more experiments, I learned a better and easier way to prepare tasty and smooth satay sauce. Using ready curry paste and fish sauce guaranteed an easy way to get flavor and a little bit of heat to the sauce. And when I made the sauce in a saucepan on the stove, the consistency got thick and smooth — without danger of getting separated.

Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy. I encourage you to try it — I bet you’ll find it super tasty and will be astonished how quick and easy it is!

The Easiest Satay Sauce

July 19, 2020

by Elviira

Ingredients

1 cup = 240 ml unsweetened coconut milk
2/3 cup = 160 ml unsweetened all-natural peanut butter
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons (or to taste) Thai red curry paste
10 drops (or to taste) liquid stevia
For serving: 1/4 cup = 60 ml chopped salted peanuts

Instructions

Place all ingredients (except chopped salted peanuts) into a small saucepan.
Heat over high heat, constantly stirring along the bottom, until thick, hot and smooth. Don't let boil!
Remove immediately from the heat.
Serve, with chopped salted peanuts sprinkled on top.

How to vary the recipe

In case you are allergic to fish — or want to make a vegan version — you can switch the fish sauce to tamari (fermented soy sauce) or coconut aminos. Just note that coconut aminos are usually pretty high in carbs so go easy on that stuff.

And in case you are allergic to peanuts, you can replace the peanut butter with Sunbutter, aka sunflower seed butter. It tastes almost like PB! Tahini, i.e., sesame seed butter, is also a fantastic option.

I prefer Thai red curry paste to season this sauce, however, feel free to use another type of curry paste or seasoning paste. There are different Thai curry pastes around there, try yellow or green Thai curry paste for a change. Just try to find a variety with no added sugar or food additives. Some people get symptoms even from innocent-sounding substances like citric acid.

You can omit the sweetener altogether, if you want. I prefer my satay sauce a bit sweet, so I add liquid stevia (or actually stevia glycerite). You can use any natural sweetener that dissolves well. Don’t use granulated sweeteners, though, as they won’t dissolve well in this sauce. Liquid sweeteners are perfect.

General prattling

Our Ketokamu activities have proceeded well despite the summer holidays. It feels that in July, everybody here in Finland is on holiday.

I will be working the whole summer. So will my Ketokamu teammates. Our web developers are also working hard: our website (also the Finnish one) is updated and has slightly new looks.

In addition to our vegan soups, we are planning to prepare meat soup as well. For that, I got samples from Kuivalihakundi. It says “meat delivery” in the bag.

There were four different types of jerky. I will conduct some meat soup experiments with them. Hope something good will come out!

My husband and son left for Germany for a week, and I will utilize the time here at home to work. Well, I won’t be running out of work… Related to work, there are many places to visit and meetings to attend. Tomorrow, we’ll go again to Turku to meet the top chef Sami Tallberg — who is also part of our Ketokamu team. Our advisors and investors will be joining as well, so it’s going to be an important day! I will surely post photos about that happening on my next week’s blog post.

Oh yes, I also got a surprise request to write a chapter to Olli Posti’s upcoming book. He will update his wildly popular “Supermarket Survival” book. I feel honored that I was asked to write some text to the updated version. I will tell my story on how I found keto lifestyle, and I also tell the basics about the keto diet. I will also talk about our Ketokamu project and how we will revolutionize the ready food market!

I got myself a new lens that I will use for taking portrait photos. My cat Pete got the honor to be the first one to be photographed with the lens. (Well, the cat is so gorgeous that he looks great when photographed with any lens!)