A simple but effective Hot Sauce recipe.

With all the bottled stuff around we often forget what real peppers taste like. Remember that most of the bottled sauces are predominantly vinegar, with other flavors, colors and 'enhancements' to disguise the true flavors of our beloved pepper.

So why not make your own?

Here is a very versatile recipe that's quick and easy to make. You are going to make a hot pepper 'base', after which you can quickly create a wonderful sauce along with a bottled sauce for sprinkling as you need.

This recipe can be made to any heat level that you desire, so pick your peppers according to personal taste. You will be adding other ingredients to this so your pepper choices should be a little on the Hot side, to counter the 'diluting' affect of the additional ingredients.
I would recommend that you use 3 Poblano's, 6 habenero's, 4 jalepeno's, and one mild red pepper for flavor. This will give you an excellent first impression of heat, with a slow build up of heat intensity and a nice linger for a half hour or so. If it's too hot, you can always add more tomato, onion and mild red pepper to cut the heat.

This is simple to make, don't worry about any fancy chopping technique since everything is going in the blender after it's cooked.

Chop the above peppers, including seeds and membranes from the hot peppers (not the mild red one) and place them in a large hot skillet with a tsp of olive oil. Keep stirring. If you want to fuss and remove the skins from the Poblano and mild red pepper, you can, but I don't.
Add a small chopped red onion, three cloves of crushed fresh garlic, 2 tsp sea or kosher salt, tsp of ground cayenne, tsp of fresh ground black pepper, 2 tsp of course grain mustard.
Cook for around 15 minutes until the peppers are soft and the onion is lightly browned. Don't burn since the garlic will kill the flavor if you burn it.
Add a large can of tomato puree or tomato sauce. Add 4tsp of honey and 1 tsp of maple syrup. Let this cook down a little, another 15 minutes.
Taste and add more salt if needed. If it's way too hot you can add a little more tomato sauce.
Pour the whole mixture into the blender and puree.
At this point it will be quite a thick mixture and you have your base. I usually add this base straight into whatever meat I'm cooking without diluting it further. So if you're cooking chicken, pan fry it or whatever, then add the pepper base and cook until ready to serve. But if it's too hot, you can add more tomato puree or even red wine to cut the heat. Red wine works nicely, just remember to reduce it down to cook-off the alcohol. I've even added a bottle of good stout beer to make a nice dark, rich pepper sauce.
Now with whatever is left from your pepper base, you can bottle it. Add a little more salt and equal parts of apple cider vinegar to your base. So if you have a cup of pepper base add a cup of apple cider vinegar. Shake well and bottle. Keep in the fridge for at least a couple weeks, even longer. Shake well before use. You can use this liberally on just about anything, it won't be too hot given the added vinegar.

That's it!

The taste of real fresh peppers, cooking time about 30 minutes.

C