home made hot sauce?

Has anybody got any advice/recipes on homemade hot sauces?

I tried to make my own a couple of years ago out of mostly homegrown sport and habanero peppers and ended up with bitter-tasting orange mush. If it ever gets warm enough for my peppers to grow I might try again.

The skins of peppers sometimes impart a bitter taste, they also do not digest very easily which is why they give you a great after dinner pepper belch. Perhaps the preservation process has concentrated this bitter taste.

You may wish to read the history of Tabasco, which in itself should be fairly enlightening. Their sauce starts with the mash you describe. A mash of salt and pepper is aged in oak barrels for two years then strained and bottled. It may be that easy, I may be more difficult.

I would try to extract the juice and heat away from the skin...somewhat like wine making. Perhaps mash, maybe roast and remove skins, maybe just squeeze in a press.

You can also buy a hot sauce making kit which comes with a book...perhaps that is another option.

Check these out:

http://www.leeners.com/hotsauce.html

Sam McGees Hot Chile forum also discusses this topic:
http://www.sammcgees.com/webpost/d1/ind ... -12.htm?47




pd

Get yourself a copy of one of Rick Bayless or Diana Kennedy's cookbooks, or The Great Chile Book by Mark Miller (of Red Sage and Santa Fe Grill fame).

Most salsas are easy to prepare. After familiarizing yourself by following a few recipes, you should be ready to start improvising. The only equipment you should need are a blender (better than a food processor), a sieve/strainer, a heavy skillet/griddle, and a saucepan.

I've worked with Latino cooks, mostly Mexican, for the past twenty six years and I'm constantly amazed by the range of flavors they are able to conjure out of a few simple ingredients, and the nuances achieved by slightly tweaking the procedures.

Let us know your results.

Evil Ronnie

Eat! You look so thin. wrote:Has anybody got any advice/recipes on homemade hot sauces?

Eat,

I've been making this hot sauce for 10+ years. Simple, yet quite good.

Enjoy,
Gary
-

Hot Sauce

The spiciness varies according to the amount and type of hot peppers, if you like a milder sauce, use less.

1 1/2 quarts hot peppers, fresh, seeded and chopped
1 1/2 quarts onions, peeled and sliced
2 quarts vinegar, distilled or apple-cider

Place the peppers, onions, and vinegar in a large pot and cook over medium heat until the peppers and onions are soft, about 30 minutes.

Remove the solids and puree them in a blender or a food processor, reserve liquid.

Add the liquid and stir to blend thoroughly.

Season with salt to taste and store in covered jars or bottles.

Hi,

For information on recipes and preservation of salsas, I refer you to the National Center for Home Food Preservation. They have a page specifically on Salsas and a lot of other neat stuff.

WEAR GLOVES when handling peppers. Even if you have a few peppers to process, you will be so better off to be cautious. I use latex gloves when skinning, seeding and deveining hot peppers. The 'not so hot' jalapeno pepper can be quite lethal when you do several pounds all at once. I speak from experience, the only relief I had was submerging my hands in water but how can you sleep? Also be careful when you attend to delicate bits in the bathroom, if any of the chili essence gets there you will not be happy.

I have made plenty of salsas where I skipped the step of removing the skins. No harm done and no excessive bitterness.

Good luck

Also, you might look at your local newsstand for Chile Pepper magazine. I know City News (Cicero just north of Irving Park) and Chicago-Main Newsstand (in Evanston at that particular intersection) carry it; I think the major bookstore chains also have it. It focuses much more on using hot sauces than on making them, but there are occasional recipes for sauces. Frankly, although the recipes can be pretty good, their advertorial policy bothers me a lot (the editors often cheerily write long essays, signed with bylines, touting advertisers' products, with only the most discreet "Advertisement" slug atop the page, and too often a recipe calls for a sauce that is available only mail-order through an ad in the mag), but I have learned a lot from it, and knowing their enthusiasm can be tilted, I can take suspicious information with a drop of capsaicin.

Great advice! Thanks much! Nothing like dicing a habanero and then accidentally rubbing your nose.

BTW, I post as Omnivore at Chowhound so some of your names are familiar, but omnivore was taken on this board, so I just used mom's favorite saying when we'd come over for dinner. Of course that was decades ago and her advice worked!

Thanks again.

I'm interested in trying a Fine Cooking recipe for homemade sriracha:

http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/sriracha-sauce.aspx

It calls for 1-1/4 lb. fresh hot red chiles, such as Fresnos, long red chiles, red jalapeños, or red serranos, washed and dried

Has anyone seen such quantities of chiles in local farmers markets?

Thx, Jen

Hi- You might try Nichols. They sell at Oak Park, Evanston, GCM, and a few other markets on Saturdays. They also sell at a few downtown markets during the week. You might have to wait a few weeks though. With all the cool weather we have been having this summer, there aren't a lot of hot peppers at the farmer's market yet. Hope this helps, Nancy

NFriday wrote:Hi- You might try Nichols. They sell at Oak Park, Evanston, GCM, and a few other markets on Saturdays. They also sell at a few downtown markets during the week. You might have to wait a few weeks though. With all the cool weather we have been having this summer, there aren't a lot of hot peppers at the farmer's market yet. Hope this helps, Nancy

Thanks Nancy, that's exactly the information I needed.
Cheers, Jen

Even in a normal year this is a little early for ripe hot peppers. One grower had a few jalapenos at Lincoln Square on Tuesday and told someone inquiring about others that it would be late August. Ripening can easily add one to two weeks to green peppers. Most growers don't want to let the earlier peppers ripen because flowering decreases on many pepper varieties once some peppers have ripened. However, small-fruited very hot varieties are more likely to keep producing buds after they have ripe fruits.

Pretty sure you can also ripen green ones yourself by putting them in a brown paper bag or box with a ripe tomato or two.

I made this batch from locally grown (Kenosha County) jalapeños and habaneros grown for me and picked by me.
Ingrediants are 'Farmer Bob's Chile Peppers, vinegar and salt.
Label design by my son-in-law, bottles and fitments are woozies and can be purchased specifically for this purpose along with shrink wrap for the cap seal.
I had the farmer grow me a batch of Tabasco peppers and they are aging in a ceramic crock along with another mash in another crock as above.
As above, it's too early for chile peppers here.
You can purchase mash and make your own from sources on the 'net.
That is what most of these companies do, purchase mash, add whatever, bottle it up with a fancy label and price. I suspect that the super hot ones add capsicum.
For me the interest was in using a locally grown resource and not so much the process but it's not bad hot sauce.
I would search for a grower who if you have the time and lower back, will let you pick yourself.
It's satisfying and you know the source, some of the seller's at Farmers markets are just peddling stuff they purchased from commercial sources. That goes for road side stands. I always ask if grown by the seller and where.-Dick

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/master-hot-sauce

This one works for me with whatever peppers you'd like to use and keeps very well.

Cathy2 wrote:WEAR GLOVES when handling peppers. Even if you have a few peppers to process, you will be so better off to be cautious. I use latex gloves when skinning, seeding and deveining hot peppers. The 'not so hot' jalapeno pepper can be quite lethal when you do several pounds all at once. I speak from experience, the only relief I had was submerging my hands in water but how can you sleep?

I learned this lesson the hard way, too. Growing up in a suburban Ashkenazi family that didn't eat out much, I did not eat a lot of chili peppers. Then I left for college, majored in Spanish, and had a Salvadoran roommate and lots of friends from cultures that raise kids on chilies. One weekend, my roommate went home, and past midnight one night I decided to try making chili from fresh chili peppers. My hands were burning so badly that I even called the ER to see if they would give me some advice over the phone. I tried everything I could think of - soap, baking soda, vinegar...I didn't fall asleep until past dawn, face down on the dorm bed, with each hand submerged in a bowl of ice water on either side of the bed.

Then my roommate came back to witness the scene. I graduated college in 1989 and she still teases me about it. But I'm much better at cooking with chilies now.

Hi- Milk is supposed to help with the pain too, I know I am usually careful about wearing gloves if I am going to do chili peppers. BTW- When I went to the Evanston farmer's market today, I saw some hot peppers, but I did not see any really hot red peppers. All I saw was some green Hungarian wax peppers, which are only mildly hot. Nichols raise everything they sell, and they go easy on the pesticide and they raise a lot of peppers, and that is why I recommended them. Their peppers are often inexpensive too. As far as I know, I don't think there is anybody at Evanston selling hot peppers who does not raise them, but there are not a lot of people there selling hot peppers. I can't say the same for fruit. There were lots of people there today selling peaches, but I am sure that there were a few people that did not grow the peaches they were selling.

BTW- I case anyone missed it today, St. Francis Hospital had a table set up today where they were giving out free reuseable bags, and trying to promote colonoscopies. They did not generate a lot of interest, but maybe if people knew they were giving away free bags, they would be more likely to stop. Hope this helps, Nancy

I made some Mexican-style hot sauce about a month and a half ago, not sure I used a recipe, just kind of winged it. Ancho, guajillo, garlic & cumin toasted in a dry cast iron pan, then simmered in some mash runoff from the beer I was brewing that weekend until the dried chilis were nice and soft and it had all reduced quite a bit, then I added vinegar & pureed it all in the blender before straining it into a jar & sealing it up in the fridge for a few weeks. I think the flavor's just now starting to come together. Like a Cholula but with a bit of malt sweetness.

Thanks for the recommendations on buying peppers! I scored some "Paper Dragon" peppers, plus one Anaheim, at Henry's stand at the Evanston farmers market today. I had no idea it was Henry's until I was asking about the peppers and someone said I should ask Henry! Nichols also had some nice peppers.

Here's my lovely assistant adding the salt:



I'm using a recipe that calls for 4-5 days of fermentation at room temperature, then a brief simmer with vinegar-- I will report back!
http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/sriracha-sauce.aspx

Cheers, Jen