preservation Vinegarless 7-pot Sauce?

[Grasshopper]

Hey hot people,
Was thinking about putting together a sauce for my 7-pots to reside in and thought it might be fun too make it as sweet as possible like a BBQ sauce. Along this line of thought I decided to take out the traditional acidic preservative (like vinegar or citric acid) and replace it with alcohol, port to be precise. Figured I'd post my draft recipie up here and see if anyone could point out any obvious things I may have missed:

Chilli Sauce

Ingredients:

• 7-Pot peppers (1)
• Liquid Smoke (1 dash)
• Red bell peppers (2)
• Spanish onion (1)
• Extra-virgin olive oil (250mL)
• Port (250mL)
• Rosemary (5 twigs)
• Sugar (50g)
• Salt (10g)

Method:

1. Dice spanish onion.
2. Slice and seed bell peppers.
3. Marinate spanish onion and bell peppers in liquid smoke and oil overnight.
4. BBBQ marinated spanish onion and bell peppers.
5. Remove bell pepper skin.
6. Puree BBBQ’d spanish onion and bell peppers in blender.
7. Seed and dice 7-pots.
8. Mortar and pestle grind 7-pots and rosemary.
9. Combine all ingredients in a metal pot.
10. Simmer in pot for 1 hour.
11. Puree mixture in blender.
12. Pass puree through fine mesh sieve.
13. Jar.
14. Refrigerate.

Feasible? Any tips would be welcome.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

Feasible? Any tips would be welcome.

One 7-pot? Come on man! If you use one pepper then this sauce is not pepper-based. Ditch the bells and use another hot pepper.

Liquid smoke is not needed if you are going to BBQ. It's for commercial sauces because people use it as a condiment.

Not sure what rosemary is doing in there.

And lastly... what makes this a BBQ sauce style hot sauce? Where is the brown sugar? Where is the molasses? Liquid smoke is not the magic BBQ sauce ingredient, many even consider it a no-no. You need the proper sugars, spices, and vinegar for balance (or base, depending on style), and possibly tomatoes, if you're going for the basic style.

 

[RaelThomas]

This sounds a bit more like an Arabic style wet rub, or a spicy capsicum dip (minus the smoke). I'm sure it'd be nice, but depends what you're after.
If you want BBQ BBQ: I'd suggest swapping the bell pepper for Apple or similar, adding onion, adding sugar and adding malt/apple cider vinegar.
I know some people like liquid smoke, but it can be really nasty (IMO) so try it out before making a batch with it.

Edit (sorry): I'd swap the oil for water or otherwise too (cook it off)

 

[Mitch_from_OZ]

might want to add vinegar or lemon to cut the ph a little. Will make it a little safer for bottling I believe. Sounds good though. Oh but crank up the amount of chillies

 

[RocketMan]

First welcome to the forums. Ok, couple of things I see with this and I have to agree with whats been said so far.

1. Alcohol will not replace the acid component in a sauce. Using Port or Rum and such is only adding another component to the flavor profile. You still need the acid whether it be vinegar, lemon or lime juice.

2. Boss is right, one pepper might as well not even use it. Try with 12 peppers whether the same or different ones. If you only have the one 7-pot then try adding 11 Habaneros from the store.

3. Ditch the liquid smoke, naasty stuff, instead put your peppers in the smoker at a really low heat for a couple of hours. no smoker, use the grill. The flavor will be alot better.

4. You said you wanted a sweet sauce but ther eare no sweet components to the recipe except the port and that's not going to be enough. Try adding some Brown sugar, honey ot agave nectar to it.

5. Rosemary might or might not work in there. Before you use it in the whole sauce I'd make the sauce without it and add some to a portion of the sauce ans see if it works. If it does then you can ad it to the balance.

You need something to give the sauce some consistancy. Try adding something like some sweet potatoe to it.

JMHO,
RM

 

[texas blues]

I've never heard of a port/olive oil based sauce. Weird.

 

[Prehensile]

If you don't like white vinegar try apple cidar vinegar, just about all my BBQ sauces have cider vinegar and one or more of the following molasses, sugar, dark/light brown sugar, honey. Honey seems to burn faster than the others, when I use more honey I make to batches one with a smaller amount for brushing and one with heavy honey for the final glaze.

I like Rosemary in my Pork BBQ it adds a flavor few people use.

Liquid Smoke is a KEY Ingredient in Tony Romas Baby Backs, they also use Pizza Ovens for baking/tenderizing and they had the biggest grill I ever cooked on, I could cook a couple hundred pounds of Baby Backs and everything else(that was grilled) on the menu at one time. It was insane, the only other BBQ place that was more busy was Miramar FL, Sonny's BBQ which was complete insanity!

GL

 

[The Hot Pepper]

I've read the ingredients again. This will not make a hot sauce at all. It will make a salad dressing. Please take the tips posted.

 

[Dulac]

Hmm, you really want grain to preserve it rather than port. From my understanding, you need a higher amount of alcohol. I used to use alcohol rather than vinegar, but I switched. I got real light with white vinegar and it actually brings out the flavors.

Edit: Not sure why you would put olive oil in there. That would make it separate (you could always shake it up of course). I agree with others, a hot sauce should use mostly chiles.


Edit: To sweeten it up you could try using honey. It helps with sauce consistency and will sweeten it up. I'd do that over sugar too. I don't know if it's me, but lime seems to make my sauces a little sweeter. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I like what it does to my sauces. I don't like sweet stuff much and may be sensitive to it.

Edit again: Glad to see others who like rosemary too. I wasn't sure about it. I made a really great sauce with rosemary last year (ran out of the chiles that made it so great). I grow rosemary too, so I used fresh rosemary. It's very easy to grow and can tolerate winters. I also liked using thyme that I grow as well (easy and tolerates the winter). Any try fresh thyme with good taste results? I've just been afraid to make my sauce taste too Italian, lol.