Let me start by apologizing for not having anything for the last two weeks. I have several projects I am working on, and they will likely be released in bursts, with several posts over the next 2-3 weeks. I have unfortunately experienced some technical issues and personal ones that have delayed the progress I would like to make on several articles, but we will endeavor to move forward.
Today, however, we will discuss food, as recipes have been a part of the asylum from its inception. The Topic is HOT sauce, and this is how I make mine. It came about because I like Southeast Asian levels of spiciness, but despise the vinegar-chilli taste of most hot sauces. Most of them have little flavor other than vinegar that burns, and I don’t find that pleasant. So I grew my own peppers and started making my own hot sauce. It is very spicy, with an average rating of 8.1/10 from over 30 respondents so far, and very flavorful.
To make THE SAUCE OF ULTIMATE HOTNESS, you need:
8 cups Ghost Peppers
8 cups Scorpion Peppers
4 cups Thai Peppers
3 cups garlic
6 cups diced heirloom tomatoes (we grew striped roma tomatoes this year and have used tie-dyed tomatoes in the past, but you do you)
6 cups rice vinegar
4 cups apple cider vinegar
2 cups of water
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons of salt
First, cut the stems from all your peppers (just the stem, leave them intact other than that) and arrange them in a single layer on cookie sheets (you can line the sheets with foil or parchment if you desire).
Crush or finely chop all your garlic.
Turn the oven on to 350 degrees and roast the peppers for 15 to 20 minutes until they start to have char spots on the skin and the peppers soften (you shouldn’t lose all the color)
Then, add all your ingredients, including the peppers, to a large pot over medium to medium-low heat and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.
When it starts to simmer at a low boil, turn the heat down to low and simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring every few minutes until the vegetable matter begins to fall apart.
Turn the heat off and either use an immersion blender or pour into a regular blender and blend until smooth.
Then run the entire thing through a fine kitchen strainer into another pot of large bowl using a spoon (wooden is best) to push the mixture through, dumping pulp that will not pass into a bowl as needed (this makes a great addition to chilli, excellent chicken treat, or can be further processed into a hot relish, it is up to you).
Return your fully strained mixture (if you are not straining into another pot) to the stove and bring it back to a boil for another 10-15 minutes, stirring regularly until it has reduced by a quarter or slightly less.
At this point, you have hot sauce, and you can put it in canning jars, squeeze bottles, or I buy a hot sauce bottle kit. The kit comes with 6-25 5-oz hot sauce bottles (depending on the kit), drip tops, caps, shrink seals for the bottles, labels, and a label marker. As with all things you do, you.
A few notes.
Unless you are as hardy as I am, you will want to run your kitchen vent (or do this outside), wear gloves, and a respirator of some kind. You will make your kitchen, but that’s okay because it becomes a child-free zone of peace for the cook and for an hour or so after. It is nice, really.
If you are one of those people who claim to like spicy food but really don’t, you can replace the pepper load with whatever you want, going totally mild with jalapeno peppers, serrano peppers, and Chipotle peppers.
Wash your hands before doing anything else after every step of this process, even if you are wearing gloves. Trust me, or face the consequences, because it will come back to haunt you. With or without gloves, the capsaicin finds a way to one extent or another.
The recipe, as presented, typically yields between 110-160 oz of hot sauce, depending on God’s will, as far as I can tell. Seriously, I try super hard to do the same thing every time and get different outputs, so there is that.
Mark 7:18-20
And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.
God Bless you
-Sam