Piri Piri Sauce substitute

Best substitute

Homemade five-minute piri piri (chilli flakes + garlic + lemon + oil)

Makes about the same volume: 2 tsp red chilli flakes or cayenne, 2 crushed garlic cloves, 3 tbsp lemon juice, 3 tbsp olive oil, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp smoked paprika

Best for peri peri chicken marinade

Close match

Not really a substitute, more the actual recipe with a different chilli. Blend or just stir it together and let it sit ten minutes so the garlic and chilli bleed into the oil. It tastes nearly right: bright, garlicky, hot, oily. The one thing you cannot fake with dried chilli is the fruity, almost sour top note of fresh African bird's eye chillies, so the result is a shade flatter and more one-dimensionally hot.

Other piri piri sauce substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Sriracha + lemon juice + garlic
Taste and texture differ
For every 2 tbsp piri piri: 2 tbsp sriracha, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 small crushed garlic clove, 1 tbsp olive oil
Sriracha alone is the wrong shape - it is sweet, thick, slightly fermented-tangy and mild by piri piri standards.
What changes
Adding lemon juice and raw garlic strips out the sweetness impression and pushes it towards the bright, sharp Portuguese profile. Even fixed up, expect a sauce that is noticeably sweeter and less searing, with a smoother, more ketchup-like body instead of piri piri's loose, oily, slightly gritty texture.
Best for
marinades, dipping sauces, drizzling over chicken, mixing into mayonnaise for peri peri mayo
Because sriracha contains sugar, it will catch and blacken faster on a grill or under a broiler. Brush it on in the last few minutes of cooking rather than at the start, or you will get bitter char. If the dish is already sweet, use a plain cayenne pepper sauce instead of sriracha.
3Harissa + lemon juice
Taste and texture differ
For every 2 tbsp piri piri: 1.5 tbsp harissa, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp olive oil
The best match if you want to open one jar.
What changes
Harissa is also a North African chilli-garlic-oil paste, so the bones are identical. The difference is the spicing: harissa carries caraway, coriander and cumin, which makes it taste earthy, warm and toasty where piri piri tastes fresh, lemony and sharp. A peri peri chicken made with harissa still tastes excellent, but it reads Moroccan rather than Portuguese. The lemon juice pulls it back partway.
Best for
grilled chicken and lamb, roasted vegetables, stirring into yoghurt for a dip, rubbing under chicken skin before roasting
Rose harissa is floral and noticeably milder, so use a little more of it and check the heat. Harissa is a thick paste rather than a pourable sauce, so it will cling in patches instead of coating - loosen it with the oil and lemon before it goes near the meat. Heat levels vary hugely between brands; taste first.
4Sambal oelek + garlic + lemon
Taste and texture differ
For every 2 tbsp piri piri: 2 tbsp sambal oelek, 1 crushed garlic clove, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp olive oil
Sambal oelek is close in heat and it is unsweetened, which puts it ahead of sriracha.
What changes
It is a coarse crushed-chilli paste with vinegar and salt, so once you add garlic and lemon you land somewhere genuinely near piri piri. What you notice is texture - sambal is chunky with visible seeds and skins, so it sits on food in flecks rather than soaking in - and a flatter, more purely hot chilli flavour without piri piri's citrusy chilli fruitiness.
Best for
marinades, stir-fried prawns, stirring into rice or beans, spooning over grilled fish
Blitz it briefly with the garlic, lemon and oil if you want a sauce that clings evenly, especially for a marinade. Sambal is salty, so taste before adding salt to the dish. Chilli garlic sauce works the same way and needs less added garlic.
5Cayenne pepper sauce (Tabasco, Crystal, Louisiana style) + garlic + oil
Taste and texture differ
For every 2 tbsp piri piri: 1.5 tbsp cayenne pepper sauce, 1 crushed garlic clove, 1 tbsp olive oil, squeeze of lemon
These are vinegar-and-cayenne sauces, so the acid and heat are already there and the colour is right.
What changes
What is missing is garlic, body and any citrus, and what is added is a lot of sharp vinegar. Straight from the bottle it tastes thin and sour next to piri piri. With garlic and oil stirred in it becomes a serviceable basting sauce, though thinner and more vinegary, and it will not cling to chicken skin the way piri piri does.
Best for
basting during grilling, shaking over chips, eggs or rice, quick dipping sauce, spiking soups and stews
Use less than the recipe's piri piri quantity at first, because the vinegar hit reads as harsh in larger amounts. Tabasco in particular is much more sour than hot. Adding a quarter teaspoon of smoked paprika gives it back some of the depth and colour it is missing.
6Gochujang + lemon juice + garlic
Taste and texture differ
For every 2 tbsp piri piri: 1 tbsp gochujang, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 crushed garlic clove, 1 tbsp water, 1 tbsp olive oil
The least-like option here, offered honestly as the last thing in the cupboard.
What changes
Gochujang is a fermented Korean chilli paste that is sweet, deeply savoury and only moderately hot. Chicken marinated in it is delicious but it does not taste like peri peri chicken at all - it tastes rounder, sweeter, stickier and far more umami-heavy, with a glaze that lacquers rather than a sauce that soaks in.
Best for
grilled or roasted chicken thighs, chicken wings, glazing at the end of cooking
Use half the volume you would use of piri piri because gochujang is dense and salty. Its sugar burns quickly, so glaze in the last five minutes only. Do not choose this one if someone is expecting Nando's-style chicken - they will notice immediately.

What is Piri Piri Sauce?

Piri Piri Sauce is Piri piri sauce, also spelled peri peri, piri-piri or pili pili, is a Portuguese-African hot sauce built from small fiery African bird's eye chillies blended with garlic, lemon or vinegar, and oil.

Cooking tips

Piri piri sauce is doing three jobs at once: chilli heat, sharp citrus or vinegar acid, and raw garlic pungency, all carried in oil so it clings to meat. When you substitute, check off all three. Almost every failed swap fails because someone added heat and forgot the acid and garlic.
Nando's-style peri peri chicken gets its flavour from time, not quantity. Marinate the chicken for at least four hours and ideally overnight, and slash the thickest parts of the meat so the sauce reaches the middle. A stronger sauce for thirty minutes will never taste as good as a milder one overnight.
Save some sauce back before it touches raw chicken and use that reserved portion for basting and for the table. Sauce that has sat with raw meat is not safe to serve, and this is where home cooks most often trip up when copying restaurant peri peri chicken.
Any substitute containing sugar - sriracha, sweet chilli sauce, gochujang - will burn under a grill or broiler before the chicken is cooked through. Cook the meat most of the way with plain oil and salt, then brush the sweet sauce on for the final five minutes.
African bird's eye chillies are hot but not brutal, and real piri piri is meant to be bright rather than punishing. If your substitute tastes only of burn, you have overshot: stir in a spoonful of lemon juice and a spoonful of olive oil to open it back up rather than adding sugar, which pushes it towards a sweet chilli sauce.

Frequently asked questions

Is peri peri the same as piri piri?

Yes. Piri piri, peri peri, piri-piri and pili pili are all the same sauce and the same chilli, spelled differently across Portuguese, South African and East African usage. Nando's uses the peri-peri spelling, which is why most English-language searches settle on that one. The chilli itself is the African bird's eye chilli, sometimes sold as malagueta in Portuguese and Brazilian shops. Any recipe calling for one spelling will work with a bottle labelled another.

Can I just leave piri piri sauce out?

Not if it is a peri peri chicken, prawn or rice recipe, because it is the entire flavour of the dish - leaving it out gives you plain grilled chicken. If it is being used as a condiment or as a small spike of heat in a stew or soup, then yes, you can skip it and the dish still works, just milder and less bright. Better than omitting it entirely: stir together chilli flakes, crushed garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and a pinch of salt, which takes five minutes and is genuinely the real thing.

How hot is piri piri sauce compared to sriracha or Tabasco?

The chilli itself is much hotter than either - African bird's eye chillies sit well above jalapenos and cayenne on the heat scale. But bottled piri piri sauces are diluted with oil, garlic and citrus, and commercial ones like Nando's come in graded strengths, so a medium bottle is roughly in sriracha territory while a hot or extra hot one is considerably fiercer. Tabasco is sourer than it is hot, so if you swap it in you will notice vinegar long before you notice burn.

Can I use fresh chillies instead of a bottled sauce?

Yes, and it is the best option available to you. Blend two to four fresh red chillies with two garlic cloves, the juice of a lemon, three tablespoons of olive oil, half a teaspoon of salt and a pinch of smoked paprika. Thai bird's eye chillies are the closest botanically. Red serrano or red jalapeno make a milder, greener-tasting version. Add the chilli seeds for more heat, leave them out for less.

Does piri piri sauce contain lemon or vinegar, and does it matter which?

Recipes and brands use either, and some use both. It matters for taste rather than function: lemon juice gives a rounder, fruitier sharpness that suits chicken and prawns, while vinegar gives a leaner, more piercing sourness that holds up better in long cooking and keeps longer in the fridge. If you are making a batch to store, lean on vinegar. If you are making a sauce for tonight's chicken, lean on lemon. Never adjust the acid in a recipe you intend to can or bottle for shelf storage - acidity is what makes preserved foods safe, and tested preserving recipes must be followed exactly. Consult the National Center for Home Food Preservation for canning guidance.

Related substitutes

More sauces & condiments substitutes

Piri Piri Sauce substitute

Other piri piri sauce substitutes

2Sriracha + lemon juice + garlic

3Harissa + lemon juice

4Sambal oelek + garlic + lemon

5Cayenne pepper sauce (Tabasco, Crystal, Louisiana style) + garlic + oil

6Gochujang + lemon juice + garlic