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Wednesday Night Sauce-Up

Since it's just me scratching my head and experimenting with batch after batch in my kitchen after the kids are asleep, it's not a "throw-down" so much as a "sauce-up" I think.

Either way, after my bitter green sludge incident I was keen to redeem myself in the kitchen and went back to the basics for the most straightforward basic sauce possible.

This was predicated by the discovery on a routine cereal and soft drink expedition to the local Safeway that they had a ton of really nice looking ripe red jalapenos in the produce section. I got a little more than half of a pound of them and picked out about half a pound of their best looking orange habaneros and headed back home for some experimentation.

Here's the setup:

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My goal was start with a simple sauce: peppers, vinegar and salt---and work my way up from there to something I could call my own.

First sauce was just jalapenos:

8 Jalapenos
1/3rd cup of white vinegar
1/2 tsp of salt

I cut up the jalapenos:

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Put them in the boiling vinegar:

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Cooked for 15 minutes until they were nice and soft:

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Dumped the whole lot in the food processor and gave it a good whizz:

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I stopped it, tasted it, decided to add a little salt, and ended up with this:

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I tasted it again, decided it actually tasted pretty good, and put it in the bottle I'd been sterilizing in boiling water with its cap this whole time:

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Awesome! I made a sauce that tasted good. It was simple, tasted like peppers, was not particularly hot, but was actually something I would eat with food! Excellent.

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Second go was with red jalapenos again, but this time adding some garlic and shallot to the mix:

9 Red Jalapenos
1/2 cup White Vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1 clove of garlic
1 small shallot

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Uncertain whether I should fry the garlic and shallots in oil first and then add the vinegar or to just cook them in the vinegar, I went the simplest route and just added them to the pot first and let them soften a little in the vinegar:

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Then I added the peppers, cooked to soft for 15 minutes or so as before, straight into the food processor until creamy:

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Oops! Came out too salty. I think I accidentally misunderestimated the power of salt on this one and it came out a bit salty for my taste but definitely had more flavor than the previous batch. I'm making progress! Still not tremendously hot, but TASTY!

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Ok, so this time up---same drill, only now with more heat. I switched the habaneros for the jalapenos and re-created the previous batch:

9 Orange Habaneros
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/3 tsp salt
1 small shallot
1 clove of garlic

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All in the pan with the vinegar:

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15 minutes until soft, into the processor, whizzed, tasted, salted OOOH! Now this is what I'm taking about. Good heat kicking in. Going for another cold drink.

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Now the main event. I was pretty sure I could make a simple sauce that tasted good, so I pulled out all the stops for the final batch:

10 Orange Habaneros
10 Red Jalapenos
1 1/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
2 cloves of garlic
2 small shallots
1/2 tsp sugar
pinch black pepper

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Oddly several of the habaneros had MINI-habaneros growing inside them. This one looked like it had a small green set of testicles inside:

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All in the pan:

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Cooked for 15 minutes (a little longer this time) until nice and soft:

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BOOM! Success. It was delicious, had great heat, and is absolutely a keeper. I would eat this on food. I got two bottles out of it, and so I brought one to work to offer for tastes at lunch.

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I did discover something interesting too... I added too much vinegar with the last batch and I think that coupled with the water released from the fresh peppers made the sauce too runny after I'd put it in the food processor. So I put it puree BACK in the pot and cooked it down all the while tasting it and adjusting it. When I was happy with the taste and the thickness I put it back in the food processor for a final definitive whizzing. I think this little tasting/cooking period definitely brought it up to another level, as I was able to really ponder what it needed. It was a little sour, so I added a little sugar and that seemed to make a big difference. I also added a small amount of freshly ground black pepper which added something nice as well. If not for this "mistake" of putting in too much vinegar, I might not have discovered that this extra time in the pan was a real benefit!
 
Okay... how do I say this... umm, did you think that name over, and its connotation?
 
Most excellent on the hot sauces. One thing, the "red jalapeno's" you show in the pics are in reality Fresno's. Red Jal's are more rounded on the ends and generally have stress lines on them. Safeway is notorious for mislabeling. Gotta' give up the love for your recipe though, my last batch was also fresno and hab. Good show!!

Cheers, TB.
 
thehotpepper.com said:
Okay... how do I say this... umm, did you think that name over, and its connotation?

Yeah, it was just something we came up with at lunch. We wanted to make a sauce so hot it melted the faces off of Nazis the way the Ark of the Covenant did when they opened it in the first Indy movie.

QuadShotz said:
Hmm, that pics from "The Keep" or the infamous Indy Jones melty bit?

From the first Indiana Jones, yes.

QuadShotz said:
I probably wouldn't market a sauce named that, but I remember drinking a lot of Screamin' Dead Nazi's before...eek!

Yeah, the picture's copyrighted and I have a LOOONG way to go (and much to learn) before I even consider making a real professional sauce.

Thanks for the kind words. I'll be sure to post another slew of pictures next weeknight "Sauce-Up".
 
I read it as a nazi that is a face melter, not good! Anyways....
The sauce looks good. Nice redemption!
 
thehotpepper.com said:
I read it as a nazi that is a face melter, not good! Anyways....
The sauce looks good. Nice redemption!

Thanks! It's delicious and a little success is going to carry me a long way I think.

My eventual goal is to recreate a local sauce I had in Castries, St. Lucia in December 1997.

We bought it at an open air market in downtown Castries and it was in a bottle that was clearly re-used from something else and wasn't labelled. The woman who sold it to us made it herself and it was AMAZING.

I know it had Scotch Bonnets in it and it was yellow-gold in color. It was responsible for beginning my love affair with the Scotch Bonnet pepper.

Re: the Nazi thing... yeah, the name is just among a close circle of friends (until I posted it here) and we all know what we mean. I should probably take it down from here as it could be construed in an offensive/racist way which is NOT at all what we intended.
 
texas blues said:
Most excellent on the hot sauces. One thing, the "red jalapeno's" you show in the pics are in reality Fresno's. Red Jal's are more rounded on the ends and generally have stress lines on them. Safeway is notorious for mislabeling. Gotta' give up the love for your recipe though, my last batch was also fresno and hab. Good show!!

Cheers, TB.

Thanks, TB. I didn't realize that about the Fresno. I always assumed those were just small red jalapenos. I love the taste of Fresnos! Who knew?

Not very hot, though, are they?

I should try this again with proper Red Jalapenos, then. What would you say are the differences between red jalapenos and fresnos?

EDIT:

I read that the Fresno is a cross between the Jalapeno and the Serrano and actually can be hotter than the hottest of the Jalapenos. It must have been that this particular batch of Fresnos weren't particularly hot. Either that or I'd fried my tongue earlier in the day with lots of Fatalii Fire and no longer could tell.
 
Here's what I made using the same chillis. It came out great but I should have made it a bit hotter.

Habanero/Red Fresno Hot Sauce. 5/15/09

12 Orange Habanero/Chopped
8 Red Fresno Chilis/Chopped
2 Green Jalapeno/Chopped
1 Small White Onion/Finely chopped
4 Garlic Cloves/Finely chopped
2 tbl spoons Virgin Olive Oil
2 cups White Distilled Vinegar
1/4 cup White Cane Sugar
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
1 1/2 tbl spoon Kosher Salt
1/2 tsp Garam Masala (or not)
juice of 5 to 7 limes

Add olive oil to a medium size cooking pot. Heat oil and add garlic and onions. Cook on low/med heat until onions are translucent. Blot out as much left over oil as you can with a paper towel.

Add vinegar and turn up to high. Add chilis, salt, sugar and garam masala. Bring to a boil while stirring for 5 minutes.

Add the juice of 2 limes. Keep stirring. Reduce to a simmer. Let simmer for about 25 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add in more lime as it’s simmering.

Puree in blender. I added juice of 2 limes while pureeing. Then pour into sterilized canning jars. After screwing lids on, process for 10 minutes in boiling water. Then store.
 
scarpetti said:
Here's what I made using the same chillis. It came out great but I should have made it a bit hotter.

Habanero/Red Fresno Hot Sauce. 5/15/09

12 Orange Habanero/Chopped
8 Red Fresno Chilis/Chopped
2 Green Jalapeno/Chopped
1 Small White Onion/Finely chopped
4 Garlic Cloves/Finely chopped
2 tbl spoons Virgin Olive Oil
2 cups White Distilled Vinegar
1/4 cup White Cane Sugar
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
1 1/2 tbl spoon Kosher Salt
1/2 tsp Garam Masala (or not)
juice of 5 to 7 limes

Add olive oil to a medium size cooking pot. Heat oil and add garlic and onions. Cook on low/med heat until onions are translucent. Blot out as much left over oil as you can with a paper towel.

Add vinegar and turn up to high. Add chilis, salt, sugar and garam masala. Bring to a boil while stirring for 5 minutes.

Add the juice of 2 limes. Keep stirring. Reduce to a simmer. Let simmer for about 25 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add in more lime as it’s simmering.

Puree in blender. I added juice of 2 limes while pureeing. Then pour into sterilized canning jars. After screwing lids on, process for 10 minutes in boiling water. Then store.

This sounds awesome.

The Fresno/Habanero sauce was the hands-down favorite so far. I did a carrot based sauce last week and it didn't have nearly the warm reception that the Fresno based one did.

I used Cider Vinegar for that sauce too, and I don't think I liked it as much as the white vinegar.

The Garam Masala is intriguing. How did that work out for you? Have you tried it with and without? Caribbean cooking uses garam masala or some form of "curry powder" and it adds a definite regional twist I think. I had a Scotch Bonnet sauce (Maria's?) that had curry powder in it and I loved it for marinade, but found for a food condiment it was overpowering.

What did you find the green jalapenos added? I have a few on hand I was thinking of putting into my next sauce... probably something with Habanero/Fresno/Ancho this time to see how dried chilis work with sauces.
 
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