Help! Need hot sauce recipe!

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MrHiggins

MrHiggins

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I'm a big fan of hot sauces, but I've never made one myself. I picked up these habanero and fresnos today at the store. Can anyone help me make a hot sauce out of them?!?

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It's easy. Personally I would remove the core and seeds from all the chiles. Additives could go Caribbean with garlic, thyme, onion, and carrot, with the vegetables roasted a bit. Blend everything, adding salt and vinegar to taste and viscosity preference. Sky is the limit, oregano, garlic, onion, and lime could be swapped out for a more Mexican style flavor
 
Caleb Cox said:
It's easy. Personally I would remove the core and seeds from all the chiles. Additives could go Caribbean with garlic, thyme, onion, and carrot, with the vegetables roasted a bit. Blend everything, adding salt and vinegar to taste and viscosity preference. Sky is the limit, oregano, garlic, onion, and lime could be swapped out for a more Mexican style flavor
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Thanks! I'm definitely going Caribbean with these chiles. Isn't there a fermentation process, though?
 
I’m struggling to find a good recipe, but I really like a habanero hot sauce made with a lot of mustard, lime, coriander and garlic. I’ll return if I any nice recipe. I want the list of ingredients to be short.
 
Fermentation is definitely an option if you don't mind waiting a couple weeks, YouTube user chilli chump has a bunch of videos on fermented sauces. An "instant" sauce can be delicious too though.
 
Caleb Cox said:
Fermentation is definitely an option if you don't mind waiting a couple weeks, YouTube user chilli chump has a bunch of videos on fermented sauces. An "instant" sauce can be delicious too though.
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My local grocer had a ton of these chiles. Maybe I'll go back and get more so I can do one fresh version and one fermented. Right now, I'm leaning towards the Cooks Illustrated fermented version (it adds some carrots for sweetness and roundness, which sound good). Anyway, keep those suggestions coming!
 
I make fermented hot sauce every year when the harvest is rolling in; always make my own recipes. I'm not sure how cooks illustrated does it, but you can ferment damn near anything as long as you keep it submerged under a 3% salt brine (1 tbsp salt/pint water). I generally remove the seeds, and you must cut the peppers open anyway to let the salt brine in, pack them in a jar and cover with brine. Put something like a glass fermentation weight, or even a ziplock with salt brine in it, to keep them submerged under about an inch of brine for about 10-14 days. After that, I blend them up (with the brine) with garlic, thyme, ginger, lime zest, carrots or sweet potatoes, roasted tomatoes, coriander, whatever!, And enough Apple cider vinegar to make it soupy and lock down the preservation. That my simple method. I've got other methods that involve adding wine, infusing hibiscus, straining solids to make sambal, blah blah...
 
I've made a lot of hot sauces. My standard ingredients are chilli, lime juice/zest, pineapple/mango, tomato, ginger/garlic, apple cider vinegar, sugar and salt. I don't have specific quantities of anything as it depends on what volume you want to make, but taste as you go. Small food processor or a stab blender for larger batches.
 
Okay, so I read what you guys said and I browsed around the internets and here's what I came up with:

5 percent brine, carrots, garlic, habanero and fresno. We'll see how she is in a week or so...
 

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[QUOTE="MrHiggins, post: 685207, member: 35693"
5 percent brine, carrots, garlic, habanero and fresno. We'll see how she is in a week or so...[/QUOTE]
Sounds like it'll be bright! (if a tad salty) Good on ya. Do let us know how it turns out.
 
Michi said:
Looks very pretty! And lethal…
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Thanks, the colors really are stunning (sorry, Carl). I'm hoping the sweetness of the carrots will tame the heat of the habaneros.

I had always avoided habanero-based sauces because I figured they were only made for the shock value of burn-your-mouth-down heat. Then I visited the western Caribbean last year and tasted a bunch that completely changed my mind: it's quite possible to create a habanero sauce that's well-rounded and enhances rather than dominates your food. I hope mine hits the mark!
 
MrHiggins said:
I'm hoping the sweetness of the carrots will tame the heat of the habaneros.
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Good luck with that! :)

Habaneros have good flavour, if you can handle the heat. Unfortunately, there are basically impossible to get Down Under. I just checked, nd it's possible to buy the seeds. I might get some. Would be fun to have a habanero bush in the garden :)
 
Michi said:
Good luck with that! :)

Habaneros have good flavour, if you can handle the heat. Unfortunately, there are basically impossible to get Down Under. I just checked, nd it's possible to buy the seeds. I might get some. Would be fun to have a habanero bush in the garden :)
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What kinds of hot peppers do they have in Australia?
 
So the habaneros are party of a group sometimes called perfume peppers. Some of the others in this group have a very similar fruity flavor to the habs but without the heat. Aji dulce and Trinidad perfume are good examples, if you can find them. I mix them into my hab sauces when I don't wanna change the flavor too much for those that don't dig the heat as much.
 
Here's my favorite of the sauces I brought back with me from the Yucatan. It's actually quite mild, considering. The first ingredients are: water, papaya, habanero, vinegar... The one I'm making will obviously be quite different, but if it works out, maybe I'll try another one more like this (i.e., papaya and vinegar).
 

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Qapla' said:
What kinds of hot peppers do they have in Australia?
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Most peppers you find in supermarkets and greengrocers are quite mild. There isn't much of a pepper culture here; the peppers you find at a supermarket are usually generically labelled as "chilli". The hottest ones you can commonly get are birds eye chilies (which are indeed quite hot).

I have a birds eye chilli bush in my garden, as well as a jalapeño one. It's nice to grab them fresh off the bush when I'm cooking.

The birds eye bush was insanely productive last year, and I ran out of capacity to eat yet another super-hot dish. So I raided the bush and made sambal. I ended up with nearly a litre of the stuff. I gave much of it to friends. They all agree that they will not need to get any more sambal for this generation and the next one. A pea-sized amount makes a large pot of stew very, very hot.

They all still are my friends though, just barely…
 
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Up_dog128 said:
So the habaneros are party of a group sometimes called perfume peppers. Some of the others in this group have a very similar fruity flavor to the habs but without the heat. Aji dulce and Trinidad perfume are good examples, if you can find them. I mix them into my hab sauces when I don't wanna change the flavor too much for those that don't dig the heat as much.
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Thanks for the tip. Looks like I'll have some more chilli bushes in the garden soon :) I've seen Trinidad in various recipes, but have never (knowingly) eaten them. Same with Aji Dulce. Yet another thing for the bucket list.
 
Michi said:
Most peppers you find in supermarkets and greengrocers are quite mild. There isn't much of a pepper culture here; the peppers you find at a supermarket are usually generically labelled as "chilli". The hottest ones you can commonly get are birds eye chilies (which are indeed quite hot).

I have a birds eye chilli bush in my garden, as well as a jalapeño one. It's nice to grab them fresh off the bush when I'm cooking.

The birds eye bush was insanely productive last year, and I ran out of capacity to eat yet another super-hot dish. So I raided the bush and made sambal. I ended up with nearly a litre of the stuff. I gave much of it to friends. They all agree that they will not need to get any more sambal for this generation and the next one. A pea-sized amount makes a large pot of stew very, very hot.

They all still are my friends, just barely…
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Too funny! I, too, had an overly-productive Thai bird chili plant in my garden last year. I ended up transplanting it into a pot that I moved into my sunroom. I was getting peppers off that plant for at least 8 months. Too hot, though, one little one could ruin a whole dish.
 
Those bird peppers are killer. I keep some dried and powdered, and add it to sauce when I need to kick the heat up. When I lived in Hawaii, they just grew as a weed all over the place. A cool thing about those perfume peppers is that if you live in a subtropical climate (or grow then in pots), they will live for years!
 
Without an airlock you might want to burp your jar every couple days, and a pickling weight can help keep everything submerged, couldn't tell if you had one in there or not. Looks awesome! My 6 chile plants should be arriving next week, can't wait to make my own.
 
Caleb Cox said:
Without an airlock you might want to burp your jar every couple days, and a pickling weight can help keep everything submerged, couldn't tell if you had one in there or not. Looks awesome! My 6 chile plants should be arriving next week, can't wait to make my own.
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Yes for burping, yes for weight (zip lock filled with brine).
 
Michi said:
Thanks for the tip. Looks like I'll have some more chilli bushes in the garden soon :) I've seen Trinidad in various recipes, but have never (knowingly) eaten them. Same with Aji Dulce. Yet another thing for the bucket list.
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Another option - Row7 Seeds has a "habanada" which is supposed to be a not-spicy habanero. We've got a packet that we're planning to grow this year.
 
Okay, here it is after 9 days. Blended it up with a few chunks of frozen mango, xanthem gum to thicken it, and a shot of white vinegar to balance the sweetness. I don't have any cute bottles, unfortunately.

Tasty stuff!! Not too spicy, really. I'll definitely be making more fermented hot sauces in the future!

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You inspired me, so last week I started some red finger chiles and red habaneros fermenting with a carrot and half an onion. I'd take a pic but my half gallon jars are amber so not much to see yet.
 
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