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My Habanero Sauce

Not claiming this as my own creation, but I found this recipe online when trying to find things to do with my habaneros, just thought I'd share it. This is the recipe I use because it has a nice pepper flavor, you get to enjoy all the flavors.....THEN the heat kicks in. Next harvest of habs, I'm gonna leave the seeds in for extra heat. If this post is not allowed for some reason or other, please just remove it. 
 

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Fiery Habanero Hot Sauce
WARNING! This seriously Fiery Habanero Hot Sauce is not for the faint hearted! Get past the heat though & you will find that it has a depth of flavor that a lot of hot sauces don't. It has plenty of zing, a bit of tang & hints of sweet red pepper & maple. Are you brave enough?


Ingredients

  • 1 teaspoon oil , any neutral tasting oil like vegetable or canola
  • 6 habanero peppers
  • 2 large red bell peppers
  • 1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
  • 1/2 medium onion chopped roughly
  • 2 fat cloves of garlic chopped roughly
  • 3/4 cup water (more or less to desired thickness)
  • 2 tablespoons maple syrup
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt








 





Instructions


  1. Remove the seeds from the bell peppers and chop into chunks.

  2. Cut the habeneros in half and remove the seeds

  3. Over a medium heat sauté the onions and bell peppers for a few minutes until beginning to soften, then add the habeneros and garlic and sauté for a little while longer until soft and slightly caramelized. Make sure you have a window or door open and an extractor fan on if you have one, to ventilate your kitchen. When the habaneros start cooking you will get chili pepper fumes which might make you cough a bit or make your eyes smart.

  4. Turn off the heat and transfer to a blender. (I used a ninja)


  5. Add the remaining ingredients to the blender, adding just enough water to get it to the thickness you like. (add a splash, blend, add a splash more if needed)


  6. Blend until completely smooth.

  7. If you do not have a high powered blender you may find some pieces of pepper skin floating about. If these bother you then just strain the sauce through a sieve. A Ninja chopper does the trick nicely, no straining needed.

  8. Decant into bottles or jars and store in the fridge. If you want it to keep for a long time then it would probably be wise to sterilize your jars first and "can" them. It should then keep well for a few months. (I just poured the entire batch into a mason jar.) 




Recipe Notes
The amount of water you add is totally up to you. More water and you will get a thinner sauce, less water and your sauce will be thicker. If you add the amount of water exactly as specified the sauce will be quite thin, like Frank's Hot Sauce kind of thickness.

 
 
next batch, I'm not going to de-seed the Habs........if that isn't hot enough, I'm gonna add like 2-3 more Habs.  I'll keep y'all posted once mine are ripe and ready to cook up  (I have 1 plant currently --just counted tonight- approx 40 peppers on it.....have like 10 plants total)   

Speaking of, anyone have a recipe for a good pickling solution for them (like you'd buy a jar of sliced jalapeno's at the store, want to do up a jar or 2 of Habs that way)
 
 
When i pickle jalapenos i use pretty much a standard pickle brine. Minus the dill/spices of course. I add some onions, garlic and lime juice to it. I go easier on the salt but i weep the cut up peppers first in salt. Give them a quick rinse before packing into a jar and covering with the brine.
 
For habs im not sure i would use cider vinegar. It works great with jalapeno. Other vinegars might pair slightly better with habs or a mix of cider with another. Maybe something with a touch more sweetness and a little more fruity like white balsamic mixed. Pineapple vinegar if you dont mind the high price.
 
Just made up a batch and wife said I pretty much mace'd everyone in the house cuz of the cooking pepper fumes.....Got a close up of color and you can kind of see texture.....I only used about 1/2 cup of water  (used 9 orange habs seeds & all --did cut the stem greens off)

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Rygel said:
Next harvest of habs, I'm gonna leave the seeds in for extra heat 
Seeds don't "add" heat. It's a common misconception. They're coated in capsaicin oil, but don't "contain" it. The real heat is in the oil and the placenta (the 'ribs' inside of the peppers). The only reason the seeds are 'hot' is because they're coated in the oil that is produced inside of the pepper.

Sorry, not trying to break your balls. That's just a big pet peeve of mine. Drives me insane!
No worries, I used to think that too. We probably all did at one point ;)
 
MikeUSMC said:
Seeds don't "add" heat. It's a common misconception. They're coated in capsaicin oil, but don't "contain" it. The real heat is in the oil and the placenta (the 'ribs' inside of the peppers). The only reason the seeds are 'hot' is because they're coated in the oil that is produced inside of the pepper.

Sorry, not trying to break your balls. That's just a big pet peeve of mine. Drives me insane!
No worries, I used to think that too. We probably all did at one point ;)
oh I know that...its in the fleshy part that holds the seeds.....I just said leave the seeds in to say I wasn't removing that fleshy part....seeds is just easier to say......sorry for the confusion!
 
Rygel said:
So the last batch of this I made, was a huge hit. People asking for more. ( I brought them small 2.5oz jars aka repurposed gerber "meat" baby food jars) Has got me thinking about what I would need to do to produce & sell it. 
 
It's pretty awesome when people enjoy something you love making, and I think almost all our resident hot sauce makers started out just the way you are now.  :)
 
Take a few dips into our Food Business forum - lot's of helpful advice and instruction on the next steps one needs to take in order to get into slinging sauce and other spicy related endeavors.  It's going to seem like a lot of work at first, and it indeed is a lot of work, but it's not impossible and doesn't take that long.
 
Best of luck Rygel!
 
I am trying to get some seedlings of Serrano, Hungarian Wax & Cayenne's to germinate. 
The Cayenne's will probably be more to dry and make my own "crushed red pepper" which we do use a lot and it will be nice to not have to buy it anymore.
 
Lately I have been "cheating" with my jalapenos......bought a couple jars of Ortega sliced jalapenos......my 16yr old & I ate them and I've been slicing my homegrown jalaps and putting them in the "juice" from the store bought stuff......takes a little while, but they turn out really good lol

Wife is ordering me some Numex Suave Orange pepper seeds. Really excited for these to get here & start growing. 
If you're not familiar with this pepper, it was created by University of New Mexico (hence the NuMex) and is a very mild habanero....all the habanero flavor, that nice citrusy pepper flavor but only clocking in at about 850 SHU. Great for cooking with and no worry about people turning into fire breathing dragons!   Might have to put a couple into my sauce to boost the hab flavor but not crank the heat up.
 
 
So it's been awhile since I've posted, but here we are! Another spring and that means MORE PEPPERS!!!!!!

We took a direct hit from Hurricane Michael last October and thanks to container gardening, all the plants were able to be brought inside (except for my dragonfruit, but it survived). This year I'm adding a lot more variety to my pepper garden. I currently have Datil, NuMex Suave Orange, Brazilian Starfish, Chocolate Reaper, Ghost Peppers sprouted. I'm still waiting on the Ghost Scorpions, Apocalypse Scorpions and a replant of my habaneros to sprout. My habaneros and jalapenos did not survive the winter. Between the hurricane, a tomato horn worm infestation then the winter (even in a greenhouse) it was just too much for them pretty much all at once. Before the storm, wife & I hit up the local farmers market and even picked up a Tabasco Pepper plant (which is doing very well in it's after winter regrowth). Tabasco sauce is a pain in the ass to make, let me tell you! Though I did make a small batch of homemade Tabasco that made the store bought stuff look like tomato sauce! Only use red peppers......the mass produced stuff uses all maturity of peppers (the more green the milder it will be)

I did make a new hot sauce as well.......this one features Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper)! While my Habanero sauce pushes the heat to the back end so that you can enjoy the citrusy flavor of the habanero, this Ghost Pepper sauce does just the opposite! If my habanero sauce is like the wall flower at a party.......the Ghost Pepper sauce gets right up in your personal space and is like HERE I AM!, but then backs off a touch and you get the flavor of the pepper with some crispness of the red bell pepper (pretty much just to help stretch the ingredients). I let this sauce come out and play.

I can't wait for these chocolate reapers and apocalypse scorpions to start setting pods.......I have a recipe for a ghost pepper/carolina reaper salsa already that I can't wait to make from my own peppers. That is the key with my hot sauces & salsas......I try to only use ingredients that I've grown from my own garden and ONLY supplement from the grocery store if harvests aren't lining up well, or a bad crop of something (usually the bell peppers or garlic......well garlic is usually because I cook with so much of it and stepping out to the garden to harvest a bulb is so convenient!)


*can we maybe get habanero added to the dictionary?
 
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