How To Grow New Potatoes aka Baby Spuds

Hubs made some homemade Louisiana Red Hot Sauce on the weekend for the very first time. We have made dried rubs before, pickled pepper rings, crushes and powders, but never a sauce.

Hubs says this sauce tastes amazing. If you have followed me for any length of time, you know that I am a total heat wimp who can barely tolerate the heat in a mild salsa, so I have not tasted it. The rest of the family members are all heat lovers, however, so am taking their word for it and sharing the recipe with you all.

Honestly, this recipe is so fast and simple to make, is totally worth your while to make a batch, even if you don’t have enough peppers at home so have to pick up some peppers from the grocers. Homemade anything is always better : )

For this Red Sauce, we used only red peppers, any kind that we had, mainly tabasco and cayenne, topped up with jalapeno and siracha. Is a mild sauce with lots of great flavour (apparently)

We used regular white vinegar as this is what the commercial sauces are made from and hubs was after that same taste, but you can experiment by adding some of the others, as well. Play around with the vinegars, make it your own.

Ingredients

• 1 pound red chili peppers chopped (cayenne, tabasco, red jalapeno, sriracha, serrano, Thai Dragon …)

• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt, to your preference

• ½-1 cup white wine vinegar to your preference

  Add the peppers, vinegar and salt to a pot, bring to a quick boil.

  Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes to soften everything up.

  Cool slightly then pop into a food processor, process until smooth. If it is too thick, add water a tablespoon at a time and process until smooth.

  Strain the mixture to remove the solids. Pour into hot sauce bottles and enjoy.

  Notes…

  Makes about 2 cups of sauce, or so. We tripled the recipe for 6 jars of sauce.

  For storage: Vinegar affects acidity levels. Homemade sauces should be kept at 4.0 pH or below to keep longer term. If your hot sauce is not acidic enough, add more vinegar or bottled lemon juice to bring the pH down (hubby said he added a ‘splash’ extra vinegar).

  Keep in the fridge for freshness and longer keeping. Will last for several months in the fridge. You can also bottle your sauces with proper procedures. We water bathed ours for pantry life.

  Heat Level: Medium, though you can up the heat ante with hotter peppers. See below…

  This recipe was adapted from a Sriracha sauce we found on Chili Pepper Madness. If you want to try other great hot sauces, check out his blog.

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We used the same recipe to make this batch of sauce from Chocolate Habanero peppers, the green Jalapenos, and all other green peppers. Hubs did not want to add brown or green peppers to the Louisiana red hot sauce to muddy up the colour.

This batch is much hotter as habanero peppers are substantially hotter than any of the red peppers that we used. Hubs says it has a definite kick, leaves heat on the back of the tongue.

If you love hot sauces and love to stock your pantry with homemade, is so worth your while to give this a try, Fast, easy to make, can be adjusted to your preferred heat level, and adjusted by trying different vinegars.