SusteNation

My second hot sauce

I finally made some hot sauce out of my hot pepper mash.  After some discussions on this thread over at DiscussCooking, I decided to boil the mash for a bit to be on the safe side.  Then I added some vinegar and let it sit.  I consider it a success and a failure.  The success is that I really like what the aging process did.  I got some of that rich flavor that you expect in a hot sauce that was missing from my previous attempt.  The failure is that it still wasn't spicy enough.  Maybe I didn't add enough habanero, or maybe I just need to find a better source for peppers, but after the aging, it just wasn't nearly as spicy as I had hoped it would be.

Hot Sauce Redux: The Mash

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):

A bit of a letdown (Homemade Hot Sauce Part 3)

I realized I never did a followup post to my hot sauce making experiment.  There are a few reasons for that.  The first is that I tasted them all and wrote up some notes, but lost them.  The second is that, largely, they were a disappointment.  First of all, I made two with Bourbon instead of vinegar.  I may have not added enough bourbon, but these tasted like soggy rotten pepper.  Yuck.  Then I had my 4 different kinds of pepper.  Unfortunately, the only one that had much spice to it was the habanero, and I've decided I'm not a huge fan of the flavor of habaneros.  The only one that came out pretty good was of course the big jar where I dumped all the leftover peppers.  It's acutally pretty tasty, and has a good kick. 

I think the root of the problem was not the method of making the sauce, but in fact the peppers themselves.  I had some of the jalepenos from my garden, and they were way hotter than the store bought ones.  So I am on the hunt for a good hot pepper before the next round of experiments.

Welcome to my Laboratory (Homemade Hot Sauce Part 2)

This weekend I took the next step on the hot sauce project, mixing up several test recipes. I didn't want to make a big bottle of each, so I had someone procure me a set of test tubes. Actually, I really just thought they would look cool, and more official, like I was being scientific. All of the recipes were based on a basic recipe I found here that approximates tabasco sauce.  It works out to 3 parts peppers, 2 parts vinegar, and a pinch of salt.  Some of them I added a little garlic, and in two of them I tried substituting diluted bourbon for the vinegar.  We'll talk some other time about my love for bourbon.  Then at the end because this whole project was feeling way too methodical, I dumped all the leftover peppers and garlic into a big jar and added some vinegar. 

Hopefully at least one of these will come out tasty, and help me refine my recipe.  Tune in next week for the first tasting!

Homemade Hot Sauce Part 1

Bring it on (Homemade Hot Sauce Part 1)

One of the projects that inspired me to start this blog is my desire to make my own hot sauce. It started with some research into homemade versions of Tabasco Sauce, and has developed into a pretty elaborate plan to develop the perfect hot sauce, that should be a lot of fun.

I embarked on the first leg of the journey towards my hot sauce dream last night. It seemed like the first step in any recipe was selecting the hot peppers. In a quest for the perfect sauce you can’t just pick any old hot pepper, right? So I went to the store and got a selection of the four different types of hot peppers they had: Jalepeno, Cayenne, de Arbol, and Habanero. Armed with a glass of milk and a tasty ginger and molasses cookie, I sat down to taste test them raw. Here are the results:

Cayenne: Tastes at first like a sweet red pepper, has a little bit of late kick to it.
Jalepeno: Very fresh bell pepper taste, but spicy very quickly, with a tangy spice to it.
De Arbol: Very mild initial taste, slow developing spiciness, much hotter than Cayenne or Jalepeno.
Habanero: Hot. Oh @#%&$@$#! Hot!

Seriously, it’s really hard to describe the flavor of a Habanero, due to the intense pain, and the fact that you are busy chugging milk, waving your arms about, and shouting profanities. Fortunately, my lovely girlfriend was on hand to snap some pictures, which I think get the idea across quite clearly.

The final verdict is that I liked the flavor of the de Arbol and Jalepeno best, and will be very careful with the Habanero in the future.