Let
me start off this posting about making my own hot sauce by saying don't
forget to respect others in your home that may not appreciate hot
stuff cooking and the smell in the house. I waited until the ladies
in our house took a trip down to Vilcabamba, Ecuador to finish the
sauce. I am glad I did as the whole house smells great to me but they
would have been running for the hills with my body parts in tow.
I
have been thinking about making my own hot sauce for some time. I
have made yummy relishes but not hot sauce. I was visiting with a friend of
mine and we both share a love of spicy foods. Esteban is the owner and chef
at Red Angus in Cuenca, Ecuador and he gave me a few Ecuadorian peppers to make my own
sauce with. He also gave me some of his own homemade sauce and I gave
him a small bottle of an American sauce to try.
Later
that day, Heather bought me some red jalapenos from Supermaxi and I
bought some more Serrano type peppers at a market.
I
got home and decided to try to make my our Hot Sauce. I researched recipes online and
found they were all very similar. I made a decision not to follow the
online ones 100%. I decided to add more sugar and more peppers than all recipes called for. I will let you know that if you can and want to, I would
recommend a small batch or two to discover your own recipe and then
from there, make large batches. This process is a lot of effort and
it generated a LOT of dishes. In order to insure no pepper flavor was
transmitted I washed everything two times so there was no issues with
the ladies getting the sauce flavor in something else.
I
blackened (I quasi roasted) the peppers, an onion, garlic and then
placed them into a food processor with some brown sugar and salt. I
then decided to add some white sugar as well to assist the
fermentation process and make the sauce a bit sweeter.
I
used several glass jars that used to hold local jam. Here in Ecuador jars
are hard to come by. I found the fermentation process caused a lot
more expansion than I thought. I recommend filling your jars only
half way. I opened slowly, and stirred the jars several times a day.
Heather even joined in and helped. She had the misfortune of one jar
going volcano on her.
I
fermented for five days. Then blended the mix again. I then poured it
into a saucepan and added vinegar. I brought it to a boil and cooked
it several minutes.
After cooling I decided it needed to be thicker.
So I cooked it again.
After
cooking, I tried a cheese cloth to filter the sauce. It was thin and
not what I wanted.
I poured it into a colander and smashed the mix
until I had all the liquid and peppers flesh through the screen. I
made sure to scrape the outside of the colander after and then I used
the only bottle I had. Yeah I know that its a hot sauce bottle from a
real good company in the states. It's not sold here and it is another
reason for my trying to make my own sauce.
The
results? My sauce was hot. Dang hot! There was a habenaro after heat
but also a lot of up from heat. The roasting gave a smokey flavor and
the garlic was spot on. No recipes online said to use onion but I did
and I recommend doing it. Did I replicate sirrachia? No I did not.
But what I made is delish and I will definitely do this again.
I am vague and not providing a recipe as I think there are plenty out
there. I also think anyone doing this will make changes of their own
and adapt to make it more to taste.
I
plan to make more posts about cooking. I am doing a lot more cooking
and I think it would be cool to share more on the blog.
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