Simple yet Essential Home made Chili Oil for the Home Cooks.

Today I have decided to keep it simple with a easy home made chili oil. It does how ever take a bit of time, but at least you don't have to stand over it the entire time. Its also a very small ingredients list as well as amount of steps in the method. Some people choose to simply use this oil for a colourful decoration and some for actually enhancing the entire dish. There are plenty of ways to play around with this easy to make and long lasting oil. You can choose to incorporate more of a complex flavour profile by adding different spices, one really nice one for me is the Rosemary oil and mint combination for drizzling over roasted leg of lamb. As I mentioned earlier, this is a product that you can easily store in a air tight bottle or container and it will last you a good 8-12 months. As for what oil is the best to use when making your own flavoured infused oil, it should be a tasteless oil with little to no taste of its own. Some of the oils I would recommend include a good quality sunflower seed oil, canola oil or a good quality vegetable oil. While doing this you might also want to make use of you thermometer to ensure that your oil does not get too hot,other wise the ingredients will burn and you will be left with a bitter tasting oil. 

Ingredients 

• 300ml of canola oil 
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (or 1 tsp dry chili flakes)
• 1 fresh chili 

Method

1. Place all your ingredients into a medium sized pot and then place on top of a medium to high heat. 
2. Allow the oil to come up too 85C/185F and then put it on a low heat. 
3. Allow for the ingredients to infuse on the low temperature for a good hour. 
4. Once the hour has past, carefully remove from the heat and allow to cool down
5. Once cooled down, slowly with out disturbing the ingredients at the bottom, pour the oil into the container you have chosen to store it in. 
6. If there are still some impurities, you can strain it through a fine sieve or muslin cloth. 

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