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Creating sauce from pepper powder

I have dried a lot of the peppers I have grown this season. I have never made hot sauce before. when I google making hot sauce using pepper powder, I get NO results indicating that this is possible. when it comes to dried peppers, I see a lot of info about reconstituting peppers to make mash, and then sauce, but what am I missing? is there some reason why I can't grind dried peppers into powder and make a sauce using the powder? I want to dry my several hundred peppers for longevity, and would like to be able to use them (seeds and all), ground into a powder, to make hot sauce. is there no way to do this? has anyone tried?
 
Ive made sauce with all dry ingredients including onion flakes and granulated garlic. Works well especially if you want to tame down the "floral" notes of chinense peppers. Sundried can even add its own unique flavor. Aji panca for example is almost always dried first before being processed into a paste.
 
I would imagine there are quite a few commercial sauces that use dried peppers and you are not even aware of it. Valentina for example looks to me like its made from dried peppers. Puya and gualillio are typically dried pods.
 
At this point, it's kind of getting to ...what kind of consistency do you want in your finished sauce?
 
If you want a reaaaaallly smooth finished sauce, use fine ground pepper powder.  If you want bits and pieces in the sauce...maybe some seeds..., use dried flakes and reconstitute.  If you HAVE some flakes and want a really smooth sauce, you need a reallly freaking good blender, not a food processor.  Or you can soak the dried chiles, blender the snot out of them and do a quick food mill.....that will get a really smooth finished product. 
 
Sounds like you want some bits-n-pieces in your sauce.  Start with the peppers in a chunkier form.  Cook things up, allowing the chiles to rehydrate.  pulse a few times as needed to get the desired consistency.  
 
Keep in mind that reconstituting things takes about 24 hours.  So if you do a mix now, and it seems 'just right' it will probably be too thick in 24 hours.  The other side is, make it a little thing now knowing things will suck up and thicken  up over 24 hours.   
 
salsalady said:
At this point, it's kind of getting to ...what kind of consistency do you want in your finished sauce?
 
If you want a reaaaaallly smooth finished sauce, use fine ground pepper powder.  If you want bits and pieces in the sauce...maybe some seeds..., use dried flakes and reconstitute.  If you HAVE some flakes and want a really smooth sauce, you need a reallly freaking good blender, not a food processor.  Or you can soak the dried chiles, blender the snot out of them and do a quick food mill.....that will get a really smooth finished product. 
 
Sounds like you want some bits-n-pieces in your sauce.  Start with the peppers in a chunkier form.  Cook things up, allowing the chiles to rehydrate.  pulse a few times as needed to get the desired consistency.  
 
Keep in mind that reconstituting things takes about 24 hours.  So if you do a mix now, and it seems 'just right' it will probably be too thick in 24 hours.  The other side is, make it a little thing now knowing things will suck up and thicken  up over 24 hours.   
I want to make multiple kinds of hot sauces. I've got a variety of peppers that I grew and dried before I had the hot sauce idea.

It's great that I can use powders. I have a decent coffee grinder for the peppers. I'm sure that would work, but I can always get a blender. It's a very exciting endeavor. Thank you for the info!
 
I tried this last year. It turned out okay, but the sauce was oddly rather sweet. Not in a good way, but not especially bad. The sauce has it's purpose (it's good on pizza), but not great on everything. 
I was working with store-bought powder and pepper flakes.

Something to keep in mind: Compared to peppers, powder goes a long way when making a mash or sauce. Peppers have a lot of air and water. When making a sauce/mash with powder, you need more liquid than you would for peppers. Quite a bit.

But, yes, you can do it.

http://thehotpepper.com/topic/70160-fermenting-powders/
 
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