Sunday, February 19, 2012

Favorite Things #8 - Making Hot Sauce!

My husband, Tom, LOVES hot sauce. Do you ever see those shows where people are trying all the crazy melt your face off hot sauces and living to tell the tale? That is my husband. He has tried ghost chiles, scotch bonnet, habanero, etc and I have yet to see him actually be uncomfortable from the heat. His biggest complaint about the bottled hot sauces is that they just don't have good flavor, they are just trying to make it as hot as possible. My biggest complaint is those little bottles are super expensive! So I have perfected a recipe that he loves and I thought I would share it.

½-2 lbs of whatever chiles you want
1 tbs red pepper flakes
1 16 oz can of tomato sauce
½ of a medium onion roughly chopped
1 clove garlic
1 tsp vinegar (you can add up to 1 tbs for more vinegary sauce)
Salt to taste

Throw the chiles, red pepper, onion, garlic, and salt into a food processor and pulse until its chopped to desired texture. Add in the tomato sauce and pulse a couple of times to combine. Put it in a sauce pan or skillet on medium heat and stir in the vinegar. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes. Taste and add more salt if needed. Cool and serve!

The sauce I made this time used Thai chiles, which is Tom's favorite for this recipe.

simple hot sauce
I get the chiles at the Asian market and it is hit or miss as to whether there are red ones in the package. If there are it takes the heat level up a LOT!

everybody in
Pulsing time!

blended heat
Tom doesn't like chunks in his hot sauce so I really zap the ingredients.

16 oz tomato sauce
Add in the tomato sauce and give it a whirl.

ready to cool and eat
After it simmers on the stove with the vinegar it is ready to cool and eat.

The really funny thing about how much hot sauce I have made is the fact that I am the BIGGEST wuss when it comes to spicy food and rarely eat any. I have been trying to enjoy it more and I admit that rush you get when your mouth is on fire is pretty awesome.

I hope you all are having a good weekend!

7 comments:

  1. What a great idea - my husband would love it if I made homemade hot suace.

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  2. WHAT??!! You made your own hot sauce?!

    Holy shizz, I need to make that!

    Yep, because my husband doesn't like spicy food, he was always trying to buy me the hottest everything. It took a while, but I finally got him to realize I like flavorful heat.

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  3. Is this the stuff you made for me that noah devoured? So yummy!

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  4. Hi Rhonda, I'm visiting from Biz's blog! We both love spicy stuff and just ran out of Tobasco so I'd like to try this. What would you say the heat level is for this? That's a lot of peppers!

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  5. this will be HOT, but if you did it with jalapenos and only used about half it would be much easier on the tongue. The only downside of this is it really just depends on the chiles, I have had jalapenos that were as mild as green bell pepper and then some that blew my mouth up :)

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  6. Mmmm, nothing can be hotter and more delicious than homemade hot sauce. Perhaps it can used on meat stew or any finger food to add that bit of spiciness to the dishes. I'll try to make that one using bird's eye chili as the main ingredient.

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  7. OK, this was the post that introduced me to you and I finally made it! I bought a pound of Fresno peppers to keep the color red, and removed the seeds. Your hubby must truly be loving to melt his face off from the looks of those seeded thai chiles! My hubs loves his homemade hot sauce, thanks for helping a sister out!

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