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preservation Vinegar free sauce recipes?

Roo

Roo

I planted Tabasco peppers this year and now I'm dying to make a hot sauce. Problem is, I can't stand vinegar. The taste, the smell - I can't be around it. I tried making pickles and gagged until I tied a shirt around my face. The point, I suppose, is that I would love to make a vinegar free hot sauce.

Except I can't find any recipes. And now that I've started looking, I've started freaking myself out about all the nasties that can live in it if it's done wrong. I've been making jams for a couple years and never had a problem, but now I'm suddenly worried that I'm going to infect my family with something awful!

Can anyone recommend a good place to find recipes for sauces that use lemon or lime instead of vinegar? Or can I take a vinegar recipe and just sub in lemon juice?

(Also, I hope this is the right place to ask this... I wasn't sure! Apologies if I was wrong.)
 
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If you keep it in the fridge there is no need to worry. If bottling get a pH meter and use citrus. But... is there a hot sauce in your fridge right now that you like that has vinegar? Because it is all about balance. Yes it is for preservation, but it also lends a tang to sauce and citrus adds a bit of a different quality, more sour. Vinegar just needs to be used right. 
 
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Roguejim said:
Fermented sauces.
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For some reasons this makes me so nervous!

I think I'm going to use lime juice - no one in the house likes vinegar, and the consensus is that a pepper lime sauce sounds tasty! Can I just sub lime juice for vinegar 1-1?
 
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Roo said:
For some reasons this makes me so nervous!

I think I'm going to use lime juice - no one in the house likes vinegar, and the consensus is that a pepper lime sauce sounds tasty! Can I just sub lime juice for vinegar 1-1?
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Yes you can sub lime juice for vinegar 1-1. I recommend store bought lime juice rather than juicing your own simply because you know the acidity of store bought.  The final sauce will need balance, and I like to use honey with lime juice to smooth.  I second the suggestion about fermentation though; with your aversion to vinegar a ferment would be perfect.  
 
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SmokenFire said:
 
Yes you can sub lime juice for vinegar 1-1. I recommend store bought lime juice rather than juicing your own simply because you know the acidity of store bought.  The final sauce will need balance, and I like to use honey with lime juice to smooth.  I second the suggestion about fermentation though; with your aversion to vinegar a ferment would be perfect.  
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Fresh squeezed always better the bottled has preservatives, unless you can find one that doesn't. Even the fancy stores, it does. All natural sauces baby.
 
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It's definitley all about balance.  A sauce doesn't have to be 3/4 vinegar to be at the proper pH.  I make a mandarin-pineapple-ginger hot sauce glaze that doesn't taste like vinegar at all and is 3.6pH. 
 
Do you like teriyaki?  or Sweet-n-Sour?  Those have vinegar, but aren't vinegary.
 
You can make a sauce without any vinegar or even citrus if the sauce is pressure canned or kept refrigerated.  It won't keep long, even in the refer, without some kind of citrus or vinegar.  It's basically fresh produce and will keep as long as fresh produce in the refer, only a few days. 
 
I definitely encourage you to try some of the other vinegars listed.  Temper it with a bit of sugar/agave/honey.  Other items like fruit juices, especially tropical fruit juices like pineapple and orange, can add acidity to the mix as well as sweetness, thereby reducing the amout of vinegar needed to get to a good pH.
 
 
Side Note regarding subbing citrus- 
Lemon and Lime juices typically have a lower pH than standard white vinegar.  When subbing in recipes, it is OK to sub citrus for vinegar as that will make the sauce a little bit more acidic.  It is NOT OK to substitute vinegar for lemon juice in a recipe.  The vinegar is less acidic and the sauce might not be acidic enough to be safe.   
 
Also, pay attention to the acidity of the different vinegars.  White and cider are typically 5%, rice vinegar is often 4% (less acidic so more would be needed) some balsamic vinegars are 6%.  Just pay attention to the acidity when subbing, especially if using an established recipe, like ones posted on university extension service websites or canning websites.
 
Have Fun!
 
And don't be scared of fermentation.  It's been around for thousands of years, and the Fermenting 101 thread in this section has all the information you need to do ferments.
 
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The Hot Pepper said:
 
Fresh squeezed always better the bottled has preservatives, unless you can find one that doesn't. Even the fancy stores, it does. All natural sauces baby.
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I can appreciate what you're saying and agree in most all practical situations.  Knowing pH (from bottled citrus) is more important than fresh in this case as it's the primary acid thus the 'safest'.  I love fresh citrus and use it all the time for finish balancing once I know where I'm at pH wise.
 
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For me I'd rather not include the sodium benzoate and other crapola for a luxury reason. Once you do that the sauce is not "all natural." Nothing wrong with good ole vinegar. I haven't been able to find any lime juice w/o preservatives. If you can, let me know!

salsalady said:
Also, pay attention to the acidity of the different vinegars.  White and cider are typically 5%, rice vinegar is often 4% (less acidic so more would be needed) some balsamic vinegars are 6%.  Just pay attention to the acidity when subbing, especially if using an established recipe, like ones posted on university extension service websites or canning websites.
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You can also use acetic acid if you don't need to introduce liquid into your recipe. Vinegar = acetic acid + water. But acetic acid is sold as a powder.
 
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+that about acetic acid. And also about fresh citrus being better than bottled. For new sauce makers, its better that the have fewer variables when making their first sauces. Using a prepared citrus or,vinegar for the first few times is safer.

Then they get a pH meter and can experiment and monitor what they are working with.
 
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Thank you for the advice!

I truly cannot take the smell of vinegar, so vinegar was out. I thought about using rice vinegar because I have it and it doesn't make me gag like the rest but I chickened out - my sauce doesn't need to keep forever and I wasn't making a lot of it. In the end, I decided to just fiddle with a recipe I found online that looked decent. I ended up making this:

20 Tabasco peppers (with 8 or so seeded because I'm a wimp)
2 sweet little green peppers (I had them so I threw them in)
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon chopped onion
1 cup water
Juice from 3 limes
2 tsp honey

I cooked the peppers, garlic, onion, and water in a skillet on the grill until everything was tender, then added the lime juice and honey. Cooked it a little longer, then let it come to room temp before throwing it in the blender. It turned out pretty well! At least, I like it, and my dad does too (he doesn't like hot sauce because of the vinegar - apparently it runs in the family!). It didn't make much but it's all we need - there are only 2 of us who will use it (mom took a taste but isn't into spicy like we are).

So thank you for the suggestions!
 
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Congrats on a good sauce! But don't give up on vinegar. Of course it is nasty by itself but so is the raw garlic and onion in your sauce, try a mouthful of that. Talk about offensive. So give it a chance and use it as suggested and you may be a fan.
 
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