How to Make Homemade Hot Sauce (Unfermented)
This is a very spicy and tangy un-fermented hot sauce with a tinge of sweetness and smokiness. You can make it at home with basic ingredients and equipment in under an hour.
This sauce tasted good as soon as it was finished, but it didn’t really start to take shape until several hours after it had been in the fridge. I’m sure a fermented version of this sauce would be worth the wait. If you were going to make a fermented version of this sauce, you would make your mash before you cook the vegetables. Then you would store it in a jar with a cheesecloth bound over the lid for two to four weeks, giving it a gentle shake and swirl daily. Then you would add your water and vinegar, and simmer the sauce. A fairly similar process, just much longer.
“Ghost Reaper” sauce is ideal for sandwiches, burgers, and marinades. I used a teaspoon of it in my caramelized roasted potatoes marinade, which turned out great, and Taryn and I have been putting it on all our savory sandwiches, like the tangy tofu salad sandwich we just made. It’s going a lot faster than I expected.
A very hot sauce with a mild sweetness made from 4 different peppers, including the infamous ghost pepper and Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper on Earth.
Ingredients
- 1 ghost pepper
- 1 Carolina Reaper
- 1 red poblano
- 1 red bell pepper
- 3 tomatillos
- 4 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1/2 cup white onion, roughly chopped
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 tbsp sea salt
- Vegetable oil
Instructions
- Rub some oil on your hands or put on a pair of gloves.
- Remove the stems from the peppers. Cut open the red bell pepper and scrape out the seeds. You can leave the seeds in the other peppers, or remove them if you want.
- Soak the peppers and tomatillos in a luke warm bath for about 10 min, washing them thoroughly but gently to remove any dirt. Then drain them in a colander and rinse them well.
- Chop the peppers and tomatillos into big chunks.
- Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan – just enough to coat the pan. Then add the peppers, tomatillos, onions, and garlic. Saute on medium to medium-low heat for 7 to 10 min, until slightly tender. The onions and garlic should be lightly browned. Remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.
- Add the sauteed ingredients and salt to a food processor and process on high for about 10 min until a fine paste forms. Then add the vinegar and water, and process again for another minute.
- Strain the sauce through a fine mesh strainer to remove pulp – optional. You only have to do this if you don't want any pulp in your sauce; but it is fine to leave the pulp in if you like it.
Notes
Taste the finished sauce before you bottle it to find out if it's salty enough for you. You definitely don't want to overdo the salt, but you may want to add a little bit more; so start with the suggested amount and work your way up from there.
If the sauce is too hot for you, add more vinegar and a little more water.
The sauce is shelf-stable and should last a long time due to the salt and vinegar, but I would still recommend storing it in the fridge for maximum freshness.
If you plan on straining the sauce, I'd recommend letting it stand overnight in the fridge so the flavors have more time to meld.
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