Last year's experiment with making my own hot sauce had mixed success. The various recipes I put together were not so great, but the jar with all the leftovers came out pretty good. For this round I decided to build on that, and try something a little more advanced. I'm going with a blend of cayenne and habanero peppers, and I decided to try making a mash and aging it. If it works for Tabasco sauce, it's probably worth a try, I figure.
I found a site that gives a rough description of the Tabasco making process, at least more detail than the McIlheny website will give you. The key takeaways for me were that they mix 15% by volume of salt in with the peppers, and then use salt to seal it in the barrels.
I basically chopped up the peppers, mostly cayenne with some habanero thrown in for heat, until I had about 1 cup of chopped peppers. I then mixed in about 2.5 Tablespoons salt. I packed it into a jar, and then layered on sea salt until it formed a solid layer that would hopefully keep anything from growing in there, but let it breathe a bit. I put the lid on loosely, and it's been sitting in my cabinet for a few weeks now. It smells pretty good, a nice, rich and spicy.
Here are some pics from the making of (the last one is after about a week of fermenting):
Wow, good work! I always love homemade hot sauces. Mine is just a simple recipe of capsicum chilies, vinegar and fish sauce. You can also use soy sauce if you don't have fish sauce. It's very good on barbecued meat, chicken or fish.
Posted by: Alex Staff | October 19, 2011 at 06:41 AM