Opinions on mild sauce attempt

[HeirloomChef]

I had pulled all the seasoning pepper plants into the garage, and just stripped them and cut them back. I normally just slice the seasoning peppers up and freeze them to use in everything from my morning omelet to a side dish of sautéed peppers with dinner. I'd been planning for a while to try coming up with a mild pepper sauce for my wife and people like her who don't like anything remotely hot, so faced with several pounds of extra seasoning peppers I decided to have a go at one.

I had an assortment of Yellow Aji Dulce, Trinidad Perfume and Grenada seasoning yellow peppers, so I decided to start with those, and leave the red seasoning assortment for another day. After poking around the pantry and fruit basket, I came up with this list of ingredients

2 ½ pounds of the above Caribbean seasoning pepper medley
Juice and zest of 1 orange
zest of 2 limes
Juice of 4 limes
2 medium mangos
2 small sweet potatoes
2 cups cane vinegar

Chopped the peppers, mangos and sweet potatoes and everything went in the stock pot, along with 1 cup of Angostura rum. Yes a little went in the cook. After it had simmered a bit, I ran it through the blender, and back in the pot, cooked some more, then blended and strained to get it smoother and remove the seeds.

The pepper character was there, nice texture but it was missing something. I was listening to Jimmy Buffett and we were talking about going to Miami for his show in January when I imagined that some coconut cream would give it a little pina colada like character, so I decided we'll do something other than the Thai I had planned for dinner and added a can of coconut cream to the sauce.

Right now it's setting to let the flavors meld a bit before I make any final adjustments, boil and bottle it. I'm not completely happy with it, but I don't know if it's just because it's such a mild sauce. I can pull out all the flavors I was expecting, there is some acidity to it and I will test the PH and adjust that if needed and I believe it does need some salt. I was thinking of sneaking just a couple of yellow 7-pots in to give it a touch of heat, but that will defeat the purpose, which was to get something that everyone other than me could have on chicken or fish.

Anyone else tried making a pepper sauce for people who think Tabasco is too hot? Opinions on what you would do differently?

 

[RedtailForester]

The ingredients sound delicious but maybe a bit too much on the sweet side. Maybe try something savory to tone the sweet down a bit.

 

[chad s]

A little candied ginger might be a nice contrast

Chad

 

[HeirloomChef]

The ginger does sound interesting, and I do still have some French thyme in the garden that might add a savory note. Thanks for the suggestions, I've got a fair amount to play with, I may split it and try both approaches.

 

[fubarhouse]

Sounds like a great hot sweet & sour sauce, but I would persoanlly cut back on some of the juice, zest can be left in, make the flavour known, but all that liquid then has to reduce, cook, concentrate.... would be quite powerful.
I keep things quite simple when I do it. pick one flavour/combination, and choose a couple of things to make them shine, then season them and add the required ingredients to make them last. Simple is always best, I like to be able to identify all the flavours that go into it.

 

[PIC 1]

Has your sauce separated with the additional ingredient "cream of coconut"..?

 

[HeirloomChef]

Has your sauce separated with the additional ingredient "cream of coconut"..?

Not as of yet, but it hasn't been setting out on a shelf yet as I put it in the cooler to let the flavors meld overnight before making final adjustments this evening. Coconut cream is a lot thicker than coconut milk, but I will probably add some locust bean gum to keep it in suspension, although the sauce is very thick now, so I may have to add some water or rum to thin it out a bit after that to keep it pourable.

I'm working on a spicy grilling sauce now, I'll probably do a post on that later tonight or tomorrow. After I get that in bottles I'll go back and finish the mild one.

 

[PIC 1]

Not as of yet, but it hasn't been setting out on a shelf yet as I put it in the cooler to let the flavors meld overnight before making final adjustments this evening. Coconut cream is a lot thicker than coconut milk, but I will probably add some locust bean gum to keep it in suspension, although the sauce is very thick now, so I may have to add some water or rum to thin it out a bit after that to keep it pourable.

I'm working on a spicy grilling sauce now, I'll probably do a post on that later tonight or tomorrow. After I get that in bottles I'll go back and finish the mild one.

Hmmm.....perhaps some "Malibu" to add to that coconut flav...

Greg

 

[RocketMan]

Sauce sounds good. With all the sweet ingredients you have in it, it's going to be that way. I think to offset some of it I would reduce the Cane Vinegar add more Rum and only use the Vinegar to the extent needed to pull the ph down if you need. How thin/thick did it come out? If it's too thin you could either boil it to reduce it or add a little more sweet potato to the mix conversely if it's too thick thin with some water. The thyme might be good but do a test bottle before ruining a whole batch of sauce.

Another way would be to put all of your ingredients less the vinegar into a fermenter and let it ferment for 45 to 90 days which will pull most all of the sugars out of the sauce while leaving all of the flavors of the fruits intact. Then if you want some sweetness to it you can add honey, Agave Nectar, etc... on the back side to the level of sweetness desired.

Good luck and keep at it. Remember that sauce making is an art with a bit of science on the side and so should mostly fun.

Cheers,
RM

 

[HeirloomChef]

I think my inital reaction was "Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!" after tasting all the pepper flavor in it without getting any heat. After reboiling it the next day and thinning it down with some more rum, I like it for a mild sweet sauce for non-pepper lovers, and it definately has that tropical vacation flavor I was going for. My wife's family doesn't like anything much stronger than ketchup and likes everything sweet, so this will probably go over quite well with them. That was my intent, and I've got a couple others on deck that are more my speed.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

I don't think I'd like it as sauce, but you may be into something for candied sweet potatoes. More taters, and those flavors.