If you’ve rolled through Trader Joe’s in the last couple of weeks, a bright orange-yellow bag may have caught your eye in the refrigerated section. Trader Joe’s Amba Mango Sauce ($3.29) sat next to the sauerkraut and pre-made pastas at my store. The bag simply says it’s a savory fermented mango sauce and the ingredient list tells us its seasoned with “garlic, salt, spices, turmeric and paprika.” Needless to say, I needed to do a little googling.
Popular in Israeli, Indian and Middle Eastern cuisine, amba sauce is often served with grilled meats, like kebabs and shawarma. Ha’aretz offers up the history of amba sauce in Israel, relating that it was brought by Iraqi immigrants in the 1950s. In his Zahav cookbook, Chef Michael Solomonov notes that Indian amba is usually chunky, more like a relish. The Arabic version is usually thicker and more viscous with the addition of fenugreek. In Jerusalem: A Cookbook, Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi mention amba as a condiment for sabih, a fried eggplant “sandwich” developed by Iraqi Jews who settled near Tel Aviv.
Since eggplants aren’t truly in season, I tested the sauce with another recipe from the Jerusalem cookbook: turkey and zucchini burgers with green onion and cumin. Though in the past I’ve used turkey, this time I went with ground chicken since it’s what I had on hand. Both work well. The amba is definitely tangy, a little funky and great for dipping or drizzling over the burgers. This is NOT a sweet mango chutney. It would also be great with beef or lamb kebabs, like these Persian lamb kebabs called koobideh.