Make your own hot sauce!

Homemade hot sauce

Saturday, November 17, 2018

If you had a bumper crop of spicy peppers and want to make your own hot sauce, it is super easy and inexpensive!  All you need to buy is apple cider vinegar.  Or you can make your own.......
Make your own apple cider vinegar
Make your own flavored vinegars 

I take a pint or quart jar and either use fresh or frozen Jalapeño or cayenne peppers from our garden.  I slice them in half and fill the jar, add 5-10 cloves of garlic and cover with raw organic apple cider vinegar and let sit for a few weeks in the pantry.  I then put all contents in the jar into a food processor and put back into the jar.  Wah-la!  Homemade hot sauce.  If you like it hotter, add habaneros or other super hot peppers.

Don't be concerned when a rubbery substance appears on the top of the liquid.  This is just the "mother" that does the fermenting of your peppers.  You'll get a similar mother on kombucha and homemade apple cider vinegar.

The "mother"

We use hot sauce to make wings for football game day watching.  We grill the chicken wings, then put into the sauce and let simmer for about 5 minutes.

For the sauce, I use about a half jar of the pickled garlic and peppers with 3 tablespoons of butter, 1/8 cup of Worcestershire sauce, 2 tablespoons of bacon grease.  If you would like a thicker sauce, use 1 tablespoon of bean or almond dissolved in cold water and then add to hot sauce.  Let simmer for 5 minutes and it is ready for the wings.

You can use any hot peppers you have.  Have fun and experiment until you find a taste that is perfect for you.  Peppers are one of the easiest veggies to grow and do great in a pot or in the ground.  Peppers are for every taste and garden  They will even grow indoors if placed in a bright spot.

For other ways to preserve your bountiful pepper harvest, see Preserving peppers