Low carb hot and sweet red sauce

I posted a recipe for red sauce together with the spare ribs thai style.

Now i wanted to get rid of the sugar, to create a more or less low carb sauce, and this is the first result:

Ingredients:

500g/ml strained tomatoes
250 ml rice vinegar
sweetener, i used one based on Stevia, which replaces 8 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3-4 tsp sambal olek
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesam oil
1/2-1 tsp agar agar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar) *)

Put strained tomatoes, vinegar, sambal olek, soy sauce and sesam oil in a pot and heat it.

Heat 2-3 table spoons of water, microwave oven, and let dissolve the sweetener in it, then pour it into the pot.

Stirr well and let it cook for some minutes, then taste and add more sambal olek or sweetener, if wanted.

Lets cook it on lower heat to get some more water out of the sauce.

Then add Agar Agar, but be careful!

*)  Agar Agar thickens liquids like gelantine does, but way slower than gelatine. While gelatine starts to thicken liquids after 1-2 minutes, Agar Agar might need up to 5 or even 10 minutes. And Agar Agar still thickens liquid, when the liquid cools down.

So better start with 1/4 tsp of Agar Agar and see if it's enough to thicken the sauce a little bit, if not, add a little bit more. Don't add too much, because when the sauce cools down, it will become thicker anyways.

If you add too much Agar Agar, you will finally have a pot with a block of jelly in it, when it's cooled down.

To preserve the sauce, heat it again, clean some glasses and their lids or small bottles with hot water, then pour the hot sauce into the hot, more or less dry glasses/bottles and close them with their, still hot, lids. That, and the vinegar should preserve the sauce for some months, i would guess.

This is the base for a hot&sweet red sauce, i will try some variations later, like adding chopped onions, maybe even garlic, remove soy sauce and sesam oil and replace it with some spices.

Well, we will see, the BBQ season still goes on ;)