Blogging Ottinger (tim)New hot sauce attempt
Okay, this time I’m trying to track it.
2 cups of fresh tomatoes, quartered or better.
1/3 onion (yes, I learned my lesson)
Garlic (about a tbsp dehydrated)
Ginger (ground, about 1 tsp)
Water to cover
1 tsp fine salt (popcorn salt)
I cooked this into a pretty thin but tasty tomato soup. I might keep the recipe around just for that.
I strained it and returned it to the pan with some more water.
To this I added
5 jalapeno peppers, halved.
10 habanero peppers, sliced in half.
No, I didn’t vane and seed them.. I’m nuts.
I cooked this for about 7 minutes, then turned off the heat and covered the pan. The smell of the peppers was already pretty strong. I could smell the jalapenos from outside the kitchen, and the habaneros got stronger the closer you got. I’m hoping this will be a good sinus-opener. My wife says that her nose, throat, and mouth hurt from breathing the steam for a second. I have a cold, but it didn’t affect me the same way at all.
I made one mistake by putting in too much water. Sigh. It’s always something. I had so much of it that I had to put it in two mason jars. In the first I put all the peppers, and the second one is just juice. The juice is nice enough, but thin and weak. I drank a teaspoon of it and it seemed pretty hot all by itself, but when I put it on chicken it all but disappeared. I think the juice will be used to thin down chili or soup, or to pour over a roast. The one sitting with peppers in it, steeping is surely going to be stronger and thicker.
The onion and ginger were just right, and I’m glad I used tomatoes. The pepper flavor is really good. If you use the same recipe, make sure you don’t think you’re using enough liquid. The flavor seems great to me, but I thinned it too much.
For a Korean variation you could add a couple of cloves of fresh garlic…
I think that fresh garlic is actually less offensive than garlic powder.
But that is just me, and I have spent time in Korea.
Comment by Walter Moore — 2005-August-26 @ 02:05
Thanks for sharing. Cool to see you kept good notes. It should pay off in the future.
I’m curious… I didn’t see anywhere that you blended the peppers into the mix at all, even after cooking - they’re stilled halved. Is that the intent?? To only get heat from the peppers, but none of the ‘chunks’ & flavors?
Comment by Smoking Tongue — 2005-September-9 @ 07:55
Yeah, well, it did soak up a bit of flavor in the cooking and the week of soaking. It has a very definite habenero flavor, with an undercurrent of jalapeno and ginger.
I wanted something thinner for pouring, though it was a little thinner initially than I meant. I should add a photo of the sauce on the blog so you can see.
I gave it a bit more treatment later (thickened, reduced, poured off, blogged) and it has passed the coworker test.
You wouldn’t like it being so wet and runny, but it really is nice on roast because it soaks in. It’s good poured in rice or pasta for the same reason. It’s a little thicker than tabasco now. And less vinegary.
Comment by Administrator — 2005-September-9 @ 08:19