Just a little sauce


 

Don Reed

TVWBB Pro
Well I decided again to try my hand at hot sauce, it all looks the same batch to batch any more.
I started with 1.5 lbs of habaneros, 1 large vidalia onion 3 heads of garlic and the dried peppers are Malato. What isn't shown is vinegar, carrots, onion and garlic powder, black pepper and dried Arbol, Pequin and Naga Jolokia peppers.



Jarred up for the waiting period, I always let them sit for a few weeks before sampling, I tried cooking all the ingredients once but ended up giving the family a good example of what pepper gas was like. The yellowish jars are the habs,garlic,onion, carrot, black pepper, onion and garlic powder. The funky one in the middle is the dried peppers all chopped up a little so they'll soften up better and a little of the other mix that was left over after filling the 2 jars. I've had good feed back on some of my past samplings so I'll keep on trying and have been told I should look into bottling it but I'm no where ready for that yet. I really need to learn how to hot bath so I can make larger batches and not keep it in the refrigerator.

 
Itza wonder those jars don't melt, what with all those habs &ghost peppers weaving their magic.

Good stuff ;)
 
Itza wonder those jars don't melt, what with all those habs &ghost peppers weaving their magic.

Good stuff ;)

Inspirational post Don, also makes me want to try some of those recipes you posted a while back, Len.

I went to a Mexican market yesterday & came out with at least 6 varieties of dried peppers - the cashier asked me if I was making salsa, no, I said, Rubs. I've never seen salsa made like this!
 
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Although that list is pretty exhaustive, I found a site authored by a Caribbean fellow whose sauces I like.

My current one uses 8-10 habs, a 14 oz can of peaches, some mango juice/nectar and vinegar.

It's pretty spicy but I'm finding that hotter is not necessarily better.

You tend to lose sight of the flavour when you're concentrating on trying to mitigate the heat.

Sometimes, less is better.

Something to keep in mind when experimenting.
 
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Thinking-man-lightbulb.jpg
 
Thanks for looking, it's really not as hot as you would think, the jar in the middle is a bit more hotter than the hab sauce. The thing I don't like about using dry peppers is they take so long to work with, I destroyed a kitchen mill doing the last batch with dried peppers. The carrots and onion really does help balance a lot of the heavy heat that is normaly associated with habs not to mention the store bought seem to be not as hot as home grown. Another thing about using dried peppers is if you grind them into powder first it leaves the sauce kind of gritty feel.
 
Your sauce looks terrific . 60 minutes just did a segment on how Tabasco is made.....probably a few good pointers for the home cook in there.
 
I get most of my input and ideas from the HOT PEPPER site, very informative and these people are very passionate about what they do.
http://thehotpepper.com/ they even cover the fermentation process for making sauce which is what Tabasco uses.
 

 

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