How is hot sauce made

Food is my love language, and my kitchen tips and nourishing recipes are my love letter to you! In this totally free yup! Free Starter Guide. Only Search Recipes. Recipe At-A-Glance. You can't beat the spicy, layered flavor of homemade hot sauce. It's a fun kitchen experiment that you can completely customize—make it mild or make it hot as can be!

Then bottle it up using our free labels to give away as a thoughtful, handmade food gift. Jump Directly to Recipe. Instructions For the Fermented Version Place the peppers and garlic in a clean wide-mouth quart canning jar. Set aside. To make the brine, heat the filtered water and sea salt in a medium saucepan until the salt has dissolved completely. Let cool to room temperature. Pour the brine over the peppers and garlic, completely submerging them.

If you run out of brine, you can make more by mixing 1 cup of warm filtered water with 1 teaspoon of sea salt. Fit the jar with a fermentation lid or cheesecloth secured with a rubber band see notes on weighing down the peppers if using cheesecloth. Place in a warm, dark spot for days, or until the brine looks cloudy and small bubbles begin to appear when you tap the side of the jar.

Make sure the peppers stay submerged under the brine during the entire fermentation process to prevent mold-growth. When the fermentation time is up, strain the brine, reserving it. Place the fermented peppers and garlic in a blender, and add in 1 cup of the brine, plus the apple cider vinegar, and honey or maple syrup, if using.

Blend until completely smooth, adding in additional brine to reach the desired thickness. While the blender is running, sprinkle in the xanthan gum, if using, and blend for an additional minute. Transfer to a bottle and store in the fridge for months. For a thin and smooth hot sauce you can run it through a cheesecloth lined strainer to remove all pulp.

Make sure to squeeze out all the liquid from the pulp if you use cheesecloth! The flavor of homemade hot sauce is so fresh and perfect when compared to store bought versions.

For an easy maybe 15 minutes of total hands on time, you have a mouth watering results that can theoretically last you for months if you pace yourself. But there is no need, you can just make more! There are so many variations you could make, from what kinds of chiles you use, to which type of vinegar you use and how much you add even. Sometimes sweetness balances out the spicy and brings out flavor even more.

You can add sugar to the final hot sauce to taste start with a teeny amount or do it by adding sugar containing vegetables to the sauce. Or you can add a carrot at this point! Carrot is a great earthy tasting, natural sweetener. You could try making a mango hot sauce by rehydrating dried mango and blending it into the final sauce.

This is really nice with a spicy sauce like habanero hot sauce. Try adding some toasted and ground cumin seed or coriander seed. Bitten off more than we can stomach spice-wise! You can use all of one pepper or do a combination. For a medium-to-hot hot sauce try using: cayenne peppers, fish peppers, thai chilies, or tabasco peppers. Again you can use all of one kind of pepper or use a combination.

For a hot-to-insane hot sauce try using: habanero, scotch bonnet, or ghost peppers. If using these peppers I would personally mix them with one of the medium-spicy or milder chiles. This is not a complete list of chilies of course, and the same pepper even same pepper plant can produce peppers of wildly varying spice level. If you make this homemade hot sauce, leave a comment below and rate the recipe on the recipe card. And please share your photos with me on Instagram, tag thecuriouschickpea and thecuriouschickpea.

I love seeing your recreations! Make the sauce your own! Taste your mixture and add finishing salt, powdered spices, or additional peppers for more heat if desired. The methods covered in this guide refer to freshly made hot sauces, but both fresh sauces and fermented sauces can be eaten immediately, bottled and refrigerated, or preserved using canning methods in a bottle or jar. Fermenting adds a step to the preparation process, but the reward of your work will be a hot sauce that has layers of flavor and helps your body break down food better and absorb nutrients.

This is because of the lactobacillus that results from the fermentation process. A popular method for preparing and fermenting hot pepper sauce is to create a pepper mash. A mash is a mixture of peppers, processed in a food processor, and salt, which helps the peppers break down and ferment. After this mixture ferments, it can be added back to a food processor where vinegar is added to create a hot sauce consistency. Whether fermented or not, you should consider learning canning methods to keep your hot sauce fresh for longer periods of time.

The more complicated the preservation process, the messier you will get, so keeping a good quality apron on hand is essential. It may be useful to also invest in canning equipment and some nice jars or bottles that add an element of flair to your homemade sauce. Some sauce makers even use customized labels for a special finishing touch and to prevent the hottest of sauces from getting into the wrong hands!

Many home cooks use xanthan gum to their hot sauce mixture just before bottling to emulsify the sauce while maintaining a pourable consistency. Some recipes call for a few teaspoons of pumpkin seeds to be added to the food processor with the mixture to give a thickness to the sauce.

The woozy bottle style is most frequently used for hot sauce, as it holds a perfect 5 ounces of liquid to keep your sauce fresh after opening. Other options include a flask style bottle or a squeeze bottle for thicker sauces.

If using brightly colored peppers, your sauce should retain a healthy bright color if refrigerated after opening. Be sure to consider the color of any additives you put in other than peppers and salt. Red onions, roasted garlic, and pumpkin seeds can all influence the color of the final product as well.

To make your sauce less spicy, you can add more of the non-pepper ingredients, particularly things like onion and carrot that have natural sweetness. Close menu. Shop Essential Knives. Shop Specialty Knives. Today, I am going show you how I make my own hot sauce. This is a very basic, simple version. You can enjoy this recipe as it is or you can combine different types of chiles and aromatics to make your own.

Just remember the basic ingredients for making any hot sauce: peppers, salt and vinegar. As I mentioned earlier, you can certainly use a different chile or any combination of chiles. You can even fire-roast the chiles! Remove the stems of the chiles and roughly chop them. Add onion, garlic, salt and chiles with seeds into a food processor.

Pulse until it becomes a rough puree. Spoon chile mixture into a clean 1-quart glass jar. Loosely cover and let stand at room temperature overnight.

Add vinegar to jar, stir, and loosely cover. Let stand at room temperature for at least 1 day and up to 7 days. The longer it sits the more flavor develops. Then all you have to do is cover the jar tightly and store the hot sauce in the refrigerator.