This nut-free satay sauce and its grilled chicken skewer marinade come from Karen Sheer’s Sunflower Satay Sauce, published on her site A Zest for Life. Sheer built the recipe around sunflower seed butter specifically so it would work around a nut allergy, publishing it under the title “Peanut-Free” and calling it “NUT FREE” directly in the recipe card.
Ingredients
- 1-inch piece ginger, peeled (about 1 tablespoon chopped)
- 2 large fresh garlic cloves, chopped (about 1 tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon)
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed dried hot red chiles
- 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce, or tamari sauce (use a gluten-free tamari if needed)
- 2 tablespoons tahini sauce
- 5 tablespoons warm filtered water, plus more if needed
- 1/2 teaspoon molasses
- 1/2 cup sunflower seed butter
Method
- Combine the first eight ingredients — everything except the sunflower seed butter — in a small food processor. Pulse, then run until you have a smooth, slightly chunky paste.
- Add the sunflower seed butter, pulse to combine, then run until just blended. For a thinner sauce, add up to one more tablespoon of water.
- Serve at room temperature. Stored in a clean glass container in the refrigerator, Sheer’s recipe says it keeps for up to 3 weeks.
Serving It Over Noodles
Sheer’s original use for the sauce is a cold noodle dish rather than a dip. She tosses 2 cups of cooked, al dente noodles — she reaches for organic round soba or gluten-free rice noodles — with 2 teaspoons of sesame oil, then mixes in 4 to 6 tablespoons of the sunflower satay sauce. She garnishes the bowl with a drizzle of extra sauce, 2 tablespoons of sunflower seeds, 1/4 cup of sunflower sprouts, and sliced scallions, and suggests adding julienned cucumber and multi-colored carrot for crunch. It’s the same sauce recipe throughout — the noodle bowl and the skewer marinade both draw from the batch made above.
Grilled Chicken Skewers, Marinated in the Same Sauce
Sheer uses the finished satay sauce as the base for a marinade, too. For 1 1/4 pounds of chicken tenderloins, tendons removed, her method combines 2 teaspoons soy sauce, 2 teaspoons sesame oil, 2 tablespoons of the satay sauce and 1 teaspoon each of minced garlic and ginger. Toss it with the chicken, cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, then thread onto soaked bamboo or metal skewers and grill on a hot, preheated grill, turning until well-marked and cooked through. She also gives a vegan variation — the same marinade brushed on firm tofu, grilled and served with extra sauce on the side.
Peanut-Free and Tree-Nut-Free — But Check the Rest
Sheer’s recipe is built to avoid peanuts and tree nuts specifically, in favor of sunflower seed butter, and her post notes that sunflower seed butter itself is “free from the top 8 food allergens: peanuts, tree nuts, soy, milk, eggs, wheat, fish, and crustacean shellfish.” The finished sauce isn’t allergen-free across the board, though. It calls for both tahini, which is made from sesame — the FDA’s ninth major allergen, added in 2023 — and soy sauce, which carries soy and, unless a gluten-free tamari is substituted, wheat. The noodle serving suggestion in Sheer’s post adds sesame oil on top of that. None of this affects a peanut or tree nut allergy specifically, but anyone avoiding sesame, soy or wheat needs to read this as a nut-free recipe, not a top-9-allergen-free one.
As with any dish prepared without a specific allergen, reaction severity and individual triggers vary from person to person, and store-bought tahini, soy sauce and sunflower seed butter should each be checked on the label for manufacturing advisories before serving this to a guest with a diagnosed peanut or tree nut allergy. This article follows Sheer’s published ingredient list; it isn’t a lab test of any specific jar or bottle.
Keep reading
- Grilling Around Food Allergies: Avoiding Cross-Contact
- Phoebe Lapine’s Gluten-Free Grilled Chicken Marinade
- Egg-Free Southern Potato Salad: Abi Cowell’s Recipe
- Weber’s Jerk Shrimp Skewers on the Grill