Morning Y'all...I hope someone may be able to help me on this one. I made a straight Ghost pepper hot sauce with 3 cups peppers with 4 cloves garlic, 1 tbsp salt and 2 cups vinegar. I blended it up before cooking and it looked and smelled so good, I couldn't wait till it was done! THEN I COOKED IT. I put it to a boil, then forgot about it (football is such a distraction...lol). I had it on medium high and forgot to stir it or turn it down for 15 minutes until the beeper went off for my jars being sterilized. I checked my concoction and all that hard work ended up with nearly a paste. I added a little more vinegar and it appeared to help. Should I just add more vinegar until i get the consistency I want? Do I need to recook it with the new vinegar to blend the flavors? I know someone has done this before me...What did you do? Thanks for all the help!
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cooking I Overcooked my Hot Sauce...Help!
- Thread starter mgdagent79
- Start date
Using only the science I learned in class many moons ago, I would think you would want to add just water and not more vinegar. When you left it on the stove the water evaporated leaving very concentrated vinegar behind. If you add more vinegar it will be very very vinegary and probably affect the overall taste. If you add water you will just reconstitute the vinegar. This makes sense in a lab ... not sure if it translates into the kitchen. Someone with actual canning experience should chime in soon. Good luck. FWIW when I did the same thing with my fresh salsa (no vinegar) it made it super sweet and delicious because the onion and chile caramelized. I now do it on purpose occasionally when I am in the mode for something a bit different and sweeter.
i don't know the boiling point of vinegar off the top of my head but the original vinegar(water and acid) would be gone/broken down and only the sweet reminents should be left behind - taste it, do you taste any vinegar now?
i would add fresh vinegar and gently reheat it(watching it this time), you want to keep the acid level to kill any bacteria while it sits or you may just want to add lime/lemon juice.
i would add fresh vinegar and gently reheat it(watching it this time), you want to keep the acid level to kill any bacteria while it sits or you may just want to add lime/lemon juice.
LOL next time don't put the pot to boil and watch football 
salsalady
Business Member
I don't think the acid in vinegar goes away or evaporates with too much cooking. I could be wrong (probably am
) but I think the acid stays in the sauce, even thought the flavor of the sauce may change, and the water evaporates. Knowing that vinegars are usually diluted to around 5% acidity with water, it seems logical that evaporating the vinegar would increase it's acid content ratio.But, I am NOT a science major and maybe some other smart feller out there knows some science about this. Interesting subject~
I have an idea to do a little home science experiment...will post it in a couple days if it seems of interest.
Cut and pasted from:
http://www.in-gender.com/cs/forums/p/20206/179776.aspx
Increasing vinegar acidity
aGirlyGirl
I have been doing some research on how to increase the acidity of vinegar. Boiling off 5% to double the acidity never made any sense to me, I thought that you would need to boil off 50%. Seems that this is wrong too! Vinegar acidity cannot be increased proportionally to the amount that is boiled off.
I performed 2 experiments...
(1) Using 5% white vinegar I boiled off 65% of the vinegar, resulting in vinegar with an acidity of 6.8%
(2) Using 5% white vinegar I boiled off 78% of the vinegar, resulting in vinegar with an acidity of 8.5%
The procedure I used for boiling off the vinegar was to place the vinegar into a pyrex dish, and then place this into a saucepan of oil on medium heat. I also placed a small piece of wire under the pyrex to it off the bottom to allow for improved heating of the vinegar. I did it this way to ensure that no other uncontrooled reactions with the metals in the saucepan would occur. I used oil, because to boil off such a large amouof vinegar would take ages due to its high boiling point of 118, so water could not be used. You need to ensure that the vinegar doesn't actually boil, but is steaming, so that you dont loose acid along with the water, because oil has such a high boiling point, greater than that of the vinegar. But even using the oil it took 2.5 hours to boil off 78% of the vinegar, with a starting volume of 1200mL.
I hope this info help some of you, obviously it is quite difficult to increase the acidity of vinegar at home with a low acidity to begin with.
GG
http://www.in-gender.com/cs/forums/p/20206/179776.aspx
Increasing vinegar acidity
aGirlyGirl
I have been doing some research on how to increase the acidity of vinegar. Boiling off 5% to double the acidity never made any sense to me, I thought that you would need to boil off 50%. Seems that this is wrong too! Vinegar acidity cannot be increased proportionally to the amount that is boiled off.
I performed 2 experiments...
(1) Using 5% white vinegar I boiled off 65% of the vinegar, resulting in vinegar with an acidity of 6.8%
(2) Using 5% white vinegar I boiled off 78% of the vinegar, resulting in vinegar with an acidity of 8.5%
The procedure I used for boiling off the vinegar was to place the vinegar into a pyrex dish, and then place this into a saucepan of oil on medium heat. I also placed a small piece of wire under the pyrex to it off the bottom to allow for improved heating of the vinegar. I did it this way to ensure that no other uncontrooled reactions with the metals in the saucepan would occur. I used oil, because to boil off such a large amouof vinegar would take ages due to its high boiling point of 118, so water could not be used. You need to ensure that the vinegar doesn't actually boil, but is steaming, so that you dont loose acid along with the water, because oil has such a high boiling point, greater than that of the vinegar. But even using the oil it took 2.5 hours to boil off 78% of the vinegar, with a starting volume of 1200mL.
I hope this info help some of you, obviously it is quite difficult to increase the acidity of vinegar at home with a low acidity to begin with.
GG