Blogging Ottinger (tim)

Iguana hot sauces get a lot of play here. The “gold” and “deuces” in particular. You can get these pretty cheap at a lot of grocery stores, world markets, and gourmet shops. I probably use this more than Tobasco, which is to say “like ketchup.” The one called ‘deuces’ I like a lot. It’s got habeneros in a mustard base, so it’s very flavorful and really good on pork or chicken. Use it to moisten and flavor chicken breast, because chicken breast generally needs that kind of love.

I’m also working my way through a gift set of Mama Rose’s Arizona hot sauces such as “Sergio’s Revenge”. Sergio’s Revenge is made of vinegar, water, dry spices, and *then* peppers, but they are pretty good nonetheless. They have Santack, Jalapeno, and Habenero chilis, and they top it off with some extract (capsaicin oil) to get the heat up. As a result, I feel the heat and it works its magic on sinuses.

For eggs or potatoes, don’t overlook Louisana gold pepper sauces, particularly the green one. It’s not very hot, by hot sauce standards. My friend Josh wouldn’t like it particularly, but he would find all of these sauces to be far too tame. I think it’s a nice low-grade hot sauce with a good, tangy flavor. Also nice to brighten up a soup.

A good hot sauce makes the top of your head sweat. These aren’t the hottest hot sauces on the market, but they are tasty and have the desired effect when used in reasonable quantities.

I wrote about my first batch earlier. I gave it another shot while grading Java tests today. I made a few modifications.

5 Jalapeno
2 sweet peppers (one red, one yellow)
1/2 onion, diced
1 leek, diced.
a few baby carrots, diced.
1 tsp minced garlic
cilantro
1/4 c oil (olive or grape seed)
1/4 c flour
2 Avocados
1+ qt water
1 qt chicken stock
1 qt heavy cream
Salt, Pepper to taste

The mix of peppers gave the soup a nicer color to begin with. I got plenty of flavor, but a lower heat that my family can handle better. I kinda wish I’d had celery. Anyway, the carrots and sweet peppers and leeks gave a nice sweetness.

I put all the veggies but the avocados in to sweat and soften for a little while, then worked up a roux with the flour and oil, then added the chicken stock and water. I put about two cloves of garlic in (equivalent in pre-chopped garlic paste) and cilantro to taste. I let this marry for a long time, probably an hour, on low heat.

I mashed and added the avocado and let it cook for a little while. The avocado added some color in addition to flavor. When it was good and hot, I hit it with the immersion blender.

An hour or so later, it’s time for the cream. My house smells incredible. I taste it and see that I was a little generous with the salt. Next time less. Not sure how much I put in, because I kind of eyeballed it. Probably two or three teaspoons of kosher salt. Yeah, that should have been a dead giveaway. It’s salty, but doesn’t ruin the flavor. I give it a little time to thicken up while I’m waiting on the family to get home and while I grade another test.

We add some dry cilantro. It will provide some green specs to the avocado-colored soup.

It’s not thick enough. I think I just added too much liquid here. Libby goes to work on it, making a roux out of the oil that gathered on top. Maybe I need to listen to Kris more. Even with heavy cream, avocado, an initial roux, and some good long cooking time, it’s thin. Libby brings it up to a nice silky consistency. I would have liked it a little thicker yet. Maybe next time. There’s always a little crowd inside the silver lining, you know?

Again we make up a little basic salsa. We fill each bowl with soup and add a good dollop of salsa to the center. A few ritz crackers around the edge make it ready for dining.

The kids didn’t think it was too hot this time. I think we nailed that part. The avocado, leek, and carrot made the soup a little sweeter than the variety I had down in Texas, and for my family that was a bonus. The cilantro set off the lighter green color, and the bits of salsa tomato floating on the top gave it a more seasonal color scheme.

It really was quite delicious. I think I’m one or two batches from perfecting our version of this soup.

This was a little too thin and a little too spicy, so I’ll be improving on it in future versions, but here you go:

7 peppers (I used 5 Jalapeno, 2 serrano)
2 small onions
1 tsp minced garlic
cilantro
1/8 c oil (olive or grape seed)
1/4 c flour
2 Avocados
1 qt chicken stock
1 qt heavy cream
Salt, Pepper to taste

What I did was to chop and seed the peppers and chop the onion. These went into the bottom of the pot under low to medium flame. As they softened and sweated, I added the garlic. Be careful, pre-minced garlic can burn pretty easily and if not for Libby, I’d have burned it. I added it too early and let it sit a little while. We saved it, but it might have been close. At this point, though, the house definitely smells like you’re making something nice.

When the veggies soften, add the oil and flour to make a nice roux. My roux was a little thin, so I could have added more flour. If the roux is thicker, the soup is thicker. Mine was just a bit thin, and some of the oil floated to to top. I would suggest more flour rather than less oil.

Once the roux is ready, add the chicken stock. I also added a few cups of water to mine, but I think I went too far with the liquids. Next time I may wait until the last minute so that I don’t ruin the thickness. Bring it to a boil to activate the flour for thickening.

This is a good time to add some cilantro. I didn’t measure mine, so it’s a matter of preference and judgment.

At this point, I wanted to add a couple of Avocados, but sadly mine had been sitting in my house for a day or so too long. I think that the avocado would have improved the flavor and would have thickened the soup nicely, but I won’t know until next time. Be careful with your ingredients! Next time I’m buying them same-day. No more waiting.

The final ingredient is the cream. I stirred it in a little at a time so that it didn’t just kill the heat in the pot.

I used an immersion blender next, and I think I will do that again. It chopped up the solid ingredients just enough so that there was evidence of the veggies (green dots all through), but the soup was really very smooth.

I let the soup sit on low heat and simmer a bit. I wanted it to thicken up the rest of the way, and to marry with the cream a bit.

Salt and pepper finish out the list of ingredients.

We found it was a bit too hot for the family. Next time I drop two peppers from the mix.

Serving a blended soup always requires a little love. Libby added salsa to the center of each bowl of soup, and that was genius. The color and flavor were excellent. Of course, the pepper and onion and cilantro in the salsa was not really necessary. Next time I will just drop in a dollop of diced tomatoes and garnish with cilantro leaves. It’s attractive and tasty.

Alternatively, this would be a good thermos filler. Then presentation doesn’t so much matter.

I think this would be good with a sandwich, preferably a seafood sandwich of some sort.

As always, comments are welcome.

It’s a chunky, orange-red sauce with a toucan on the label. What’s not to like?

It has some heat. I wouldn’t consider it to be two-x hot, compared to other habenero sauces. I think that it’s maybe 1/2-x hot compared to a lot of habenero sauces, but the flavor is soooo very nice. I think that they’re comparing it to a non-habenero sauce maybe. That’s the trouble with hot sauces, if they don’t list scoville units you don’t really have a clue what their scale is. This wouldn’t be “warmish” compared to the Blair’s line of sauces, but it is extra hot compared to a lot of the popular vinegar-and-red-pepper sauces. I shouldn’t have compared it to Crystal, Louisana, Tabasco, or Frank’s. It’s not really fair. But you don’t have to take my word for it. I’ve recently found that maybe I’m not a real chili head. I didn’t even know there was a mailing list.

I tend to like tropical sauces anyway, and my favorite for some time has been the Walker’s Woods scotch bonnet sauce. I can’t say whether I which I would pass up for the other.

So far I’ve only had it as the “tip of the finger” test and on a sandwich-wrap-thing (roasted pepper hummas and spinach rolled up in a tortilla). I like very much. I’m going to have to try it on some other foods before I give it the final vote, but I think that it’s well worth a try. I picked it up at a grocery store in Malvern, PA. I am looking forward to trying it on a burger or dog, and then maybe on a pork roast later on. And maybe with fritos. Maybe on eggs. Or coffee cake. Or toast. Or to drink.

This really isn’t about hot sauce.

Last week my oldest boy picked up some habenero Doritos. They’re quite good but I did lose interest after a dozen chips. I liked them, but they weren’t “all that” by themselves. I don’t eat many of the Doritos at one sitting anyway (which is a good thing).

I picked up some tonight, and we tried something different. We also picked up some tomatoes (4 roma tomatoes) and some onion, a serrano pepper, and some special ingredients. We tried the chips with homemade salsa and homemade guacamole. Our recipes are very simple, but very tasty. The ingredients above are almost our salsa recipe. We add a bit of lemon, salt, and pepper. It’s quite mild and nice (depending on how chunky you cut up the serrano pepper).

    Homemade Guac
	
    1 Avocado
    2 Tablespoons Fresh Salsa
   Squeeze of Lemon Juice

The salsa is still better with corn tortilla chips or maybe Fritos. Habenero Doritos did nothing for the salsa, and they reciprocated.
The store-bought black bean salsa was okay with the chips, but unremarkable.

The guacamole, on the other hand, formed a truly wonderful marriage with the habenero Doritos. In fact, the combination was a little past wonderful. I now plan to keep these chips on hand as an excuse to buy guac ingredients. I don’t know what else the chips are really good for, but maybe I’ll find a few more interesting uses.

Oh, the chips are not horribly hot. They have a bite, but odds are that you won’t find get much of a burn at all. They just taste really, really good with guacamole.

I got a little creative this week. I still have a lot of the “mean green” sauce that I made quite a while back. It’s only problem is that it was made with far too much onion to be a good general hot sauce, and I’d been using it as a marinade (with good success, esp on pork). It finally dawned on me the other day to mix it with plain yellow mustard. The result is one very, very good hot dog sauce.

Today I was munching on cheese spread & crackers when I realized that it needed more “bite”. I have plenty of bite stashed away, and my wife recommended I try the pepper relish. I’ve been half-afraid of using it, and it’s not mellowed since it was made originally. I tried it directly on hot dogs, and I’ve mixed it into salsa, but was wondering what to do with it as well. This stuff is soooo good in cheese spread. The cheese spread mellowed the heat, and bleneded nice. I think that I’ll have to start making some kind of cheese dip with it for parties in the future.

The downer of the day is Blair’s mild green jalapeno sauce. They should just call it a green garlic sauce. I was looking forward to jalapeno flavor, but didn’t get any noticeable flavor other than garlic. Now, if they sold it as a garlic sauce with a hint of pepper, I’d probably not complain. They didn’t and I did.

Where is smoking tongue? Is he still alive?

Note to self: when Blair says “XXX Hot”, he really means it. All those other guys may be kidding, but Blair is one of the few who must absolutely be taken seriously.

Today I had to mop Blair’s After Death sauce off of my burger in order to eat it. That doesn’t generally happen. I’m not a total hot pepper madman (I don’t drink Dave’s Insanity for fun) but I like the hot stuff pretty well. In fact, there are few foods that I think are best kept totally pepper-free. But I was lit up. I had one of those burning, tingling, sweating, crying, nose-running experiences. What a crazy time. It was hot enough that I wasn’t having fun.

Of course, I don’t know if I was just feeling sensitive today with the head cold and all, so I have to try it again soon just to be sure. I definitely was feeling alive. I’m sure that this sauce will be excellent for the times when I need to stay awake.

My latest is a serano pepper hot sauce. I have been making hot sauces with ginger and onion and garlic in them, and decided I needed to back off and get some basics down. I have used too much onion and too much garlic in the past and need to get a better handle on the process so this time I kept it simple.

I put the peppers in a little water and vinegar and kosher salt, boiled them until fairly soft, and then pressed them through a strainer with a spoon until I had nothing left but the skins. I poured off the thick, gobby green stuff into a small dish (I need bottles) and have been enjoying it for a while now. It brightens up just about any dish, especially omelettes or potatoes. My family is a little afraid of it, but I think it’s reasonably mild and has a nice flavor. I also wimped out and didn’t include a lot of the vanes and seeds. It would be stronger if I did, but wouldn’t taste any better.

Next time, I’ll probably leave out the vinegar or add it after straining (and in small amounts purely for preservation). As is, it’s a nice condiment. I guess less is more.

I’ve got a lot more peppers. When I get a few bottles, I’ll hit it again.

I’d been given a supply of about eight green bell peppers and a small supply of 4 habeneros (beautiful, bright, like pumpkins) and hand ful of small jalapenos. I roasted them all, pulled off the dark skins, and dropped them in a blender with some onion, garlic, and generous amount of salt. This made a fairly hot, and somewhat bland mash. To the mash I added some oil, vinegar, and lime juice. I let this cook up a bit in a covered pot, and added a little sugar, cayenne powder, and black pepper. Finally, I poured all of this into a strainer over another pot to catch the sauce.

I gave in to the temptation to use a little bit of food color, because it was an odd yellowish, pale-greenish, orangish color which was not particularly appetizing. A very little bit of green set it right.

Although I know you should let it sit and “merge”, I went straight to the teaspoon test. It is milder and a bit more bland up-front than I expected, though it’s a nice flavor. About the time you swallow, you get the tingle in your mouth. It’s a decent bit of habanero burn once it gets started, though not long-lived. I suspect it will go nicely with pork or chicken. I’m waiting to see what it’s like when it’s had some fridge time and the flavors have blended a bit better.

This is the first one where I did not pour the ingredients together and let them sit for days or weeks. To grind and strain right away probably lost some of the best flavors, but I’ll give another opinion on it after it’s sat a while. I hope the color doesn’t intensify and the sauce doesn’t separate too horribly.

This one is now my very favorite. I have it on chips, on pizza, on hamburger, on anything. The burn is pleasant, but not too long-lasting, and it’s flavorful. I might just make this in bulk and forget about most of the others.

I’ve had it on tortillas, hotdogs, pizza, hamburgers, roast. I will run out at this rate. It’s a bit chunky, almost salsa-like, and that means that it piles on top of foods and doesn’t run off. I’ll try to track the ingredients more carefully on the next batch, but I think you can be pretty loose with it and still be right.