DIY habanero hot sauce

Seems like it has been a while since we've had any cookery related threads on here and I've really enjoyed other peoples in the past, so when I decided to have a crack at making habanero chilli sauce this afternoon I thought it would be fun to take a few pics and share the results.

I didn't follow one specific recipe, but read quite a few different ones and took the best ideas from each.  The result is decent - needless to say it is really hot!  But there's really good flavour in there too so I am pleased at how it went.  Next time I'll make a much bigger batch and give them away to anyone daft enough to accept one! 

Ingredients :



A lot of garlic :



Dice 400g tomatoes, 3 carrots, an onion and two red peppers and sweat with the garlic for 20 - 30 mins :



Remove chilli stems and cut in half, but leave seeds and white membrane in for maximum potency!  This was about 300g I think



Chop the habaneros roughly.  I took the safe option and went for latex gloves for this operation! :



Give the habaneros a quick blitz as the stuff in the pan continues to sweat :



Add the cooked ingredients and blitz again :



The concoction now gets another round in the pan.  About 200ml of cider vinegar and the juice of four limes also went in.  It is starting to look, and smell, the part now :



Add salt :



Add sugar :



Add cumin :



At this point I gave it a big stir, waited a couple of minutes and checked the seasoning.  A little bit more salt, cumin and a small splash of cider vinegar got everything nicely balanced.

Following a nice slow 30 minute simmer, this was the end result - just under 1.5L in total.  There are no photos of the bottling process because without a funnel, things got a little messy to say the least! 

Apparently these bottles (first sterilised in the oven) will keep the sauce edible for as long as a year though I doubt it will last that long ;D



Anyone else got any recipes or tips they'd like to share?  I can see sauce making being a regular occurrence now I've discovered how easy it is and how good the results are!

Cheers

Rob

Good stuff Rob. It sure looks delicious.

Seeing those flippie beer bottles reminded me of when I was in Germany back in the '70s on NATO maneuvers. Good early beer memories.

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This weekend I cooked chili and I usually start with a package of dried ingredients like Wick Fowlers 2 alarm chili mix just because it's an easy starting point, then I start adding fresh ingredients.  I added two different kinds of fresh (hot) pepper, and a couple bell peppers on top of the dry powered chili pepper et al. A couple serrano and two jalapeno peppers were fresh from the store. I can't get fresh habaneros here in small town MS, I've seen them in markets in Ca. and I know guys who grow their own habaneros here. I have a bunch of dried habanero stashed in my cupboard in case of emergency, but i didn't dip into the deep heat this time. 

I have gotten into the habit of mixing together different kinds of hot pepper, in a quality not quantity (of scoville units) thing. I often throw Anaheim (banana) peppers into normally not hot dishes just for a little variety.. The different hot peppers all have different signatures and can work nicely together. Habanero taste a little metallic to me, if too strong, but their heat is good.

==== other ingredients in my chili were two kinds of meat (beef and pork), 1# chopped tomatoes, beans (I know but I'm not from texas), sweet potato, two kinds of onion (red, and yellow), brown rice.....  and several hours on top of my stove at the lowest heat simmering. 

JR

My habanero hot sauce is much simpler.  Throw a bunch of ripe (ie, not green) habaneros, a clove or two of garlic, maybe a quarter teaspoon of salt into the food processor.  Add a little vinegar to the mix as things get ground up.  Add more vinegar upon bottling.  Let it sit in the fridge for a few weeks before use in order to let it mellow a bit.  Use sparingly--measure in drops.  Lasts a year or more if kept refrigerated. 

Simple, unadorned, tasty. 

Nice !        haven't seen anything this good since the X-mas food thread

JR : the chili sounds fantastic! I agree about mixing different types of pepper too. When I've grown them in past.summers I've discovered that the milder but fruitier ones do much better in the UK climate than habanero etc so I've had the opportunity to try out Anheim for example.

And judging by your message it sounds like it may be sacrilege over there, but beans are an absolute must in by chili of mine!

Hodad : yum! I will try something along those lines too at some point. But this sauce is one you can be a bit more liberal with rather than just adding couple of drops during cooking.

oh man,
this looks FANTASTIC!!!!!!

Mattia.

Yummy.

We should have more food recipes around here.

Gas stoves (and charcoal grills) are the best! For both subtle and not-so-subtle enhancements...

Cheers,
jb

EDIT: Oops! Thought I saw flames in there but I guess it was the effect of the peppers... Oh well.

I tried a much more labor intensive experiment, that was well worth the effort.  You see I don't have much left.  Yields a milder, but still very hot, sauce that reveals the full flavor of the pepper.  You can put a full teaspoon of it on a steak, or a hamburger, and you get a strong smokey fruity flavor.  It will light you up, but nowhere near the out of body experience that one would expect. 



Habeneros on a charcoal grill to blacken slightly.

Cool in the fridge.

Put on the latex gloves, cut open, remove seeds, then lay out the pepper walls sections and also completely cut out the membrane strips.  By this I mean slice out the membrane and the wall behind it as well, leave nothing to chance. 

Blend to taste with salt, garlic, and vinegar in a food processor. 

This kept with no spoilage in the fridge for almost a year now.  New plants in the garden, getting ready for this years batch. 

emrr:
stripping seeds & membranes from all those little habaneros sounds like an awful lot of work--but I bet the results are awesome!  More flavor, less heat. 

Yeah, a ton of work for very little sauce.  I don't see how you could mass produce such a sauce. 

Roasted peppers are the best!  You can do it with any style.  Totally worth the time taken to remove the inner bits.  I always throw a few sweet reds or jalapenos on the grill when I am cooking something else.

I cant handle the heat the way I used to. . .  I sure miss the habaneros, kim chee, cajun, vindaloo, malaysian, etc.
Mike

Very nice! Always enjoy finding new recipe's...

Wow good to see such enthusiasm for hot sauce!

On the basis of advice / experience in this thread, I'll definitely try roasted peppers next time. Roasted bell peppers (US terminology) are a staple of other recipes of mine 

But I'm interested to hear from people who've done this before for their chilli sacue: Is removing the seeds / membrane because roasting makes the pepper (and then the sauce) taste bad, or is it just a heat thing? Personally I leave them in 'cos I like the heat, not through laziness when cooking with habanero...

Apparently the white membrane and seeds are full of capsaicin, the heat in them puppies.

I don't remove the heat when I cook which kind of defeats the purpose, but I do try to keep from touching the insides a lot and getting it on my fingers. If I cut up hot peppers before I jog, wiping sweat off my forehead with the same hand that touched hot pepper, even hours later after washing with soap and water will still end up causing my eyes to burn after a few miles. it's remarkable how little it takes in our eyes that are super sensitive. 

An old trick that works pretty well is to rub some cooking oil (canola, olive, whatever oil you have around) on your hands before you handle the hot peppers, the capsaicin won't get stuck to your skin, but you don't want to oil up your hands just before messing with sharp knives. it helps, but not as much to rub some oil on after you handle the hot stuff to help lift off any stuck capsaicin after you put the knives safely away. 

If you are careful you can learn to cut up the hot peppers into small pieces without touching the insides...  but don't rub your eyes JIC. 

JR

No point with most peppers, but I love the taste of the habenero, and when you get all the seeds and membranes out you can eat a lot of it.  I still mean to go for an anaesthetised mouth and semi-out-of-body experience, but with max flavor.  The seeded variety has its place, and sorry I forgot to say yours looks great.  I keep whole hot peppers from the garden in vinegar in the fridge, and add them to dishes too.

Great subject!

I just start growing peppers, the seeds came from Mark Nevers, Beechhouse Studio in Nashville.
On the day of return to Europe I mailed 2  wrapped peppers  to home from the airport, they arrived fine!
According to him these are from the Bahama's.

Now I hope they will have peppers later this year.

Great cooking project for kids. .....and the fight for "who's going to lick the bowl ?"....
....the fight being..."who is not".

While the recipe is great ****, I've not found much use for it. It's too hot.
I made a jar of pickled Habaneros (tiny slices), and found that one or two slices would fire my palate for the entire meal.
....basically ruining the other tastes for the other edibles on the plate.

Despite my above opinion, I am now growing Scotch Bonnet peppers, and the "ghost pepper"..... and am looking forward to their quasi-orgasmic burn.

You guys are a bad influence on me.. Last weekend I dug out my stash of dried habaneros. I only used one habanero to a whole pot of chili and I cut it up into tiny pieces. Still tasted the extra heat, but nice blended in with a couple serranos and anahiems.

JR