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Creating your own hot sauce may be easier than you might expect. Since everyone has different tastes it only makes sense that your own creation might suit you better than someone else’s. To create your own sauce you really have to start with an idea of what flavors you like. Maybe you have a favorite food that you just love hot sauce on but haven’t found the perfect sauce to enhance the flavor. Or maybe you just want to add some heat without affecting the flavor. Either way you have a starting point. I always find its easier to stay on track at this point by making notes on what you are trying to achieve. Take note of what flavor you are looking for and beside each write down ingredients that will enhance those flavors. Once this is done it just process of elimination and lots of sampling to get your proportions right. I have found that I seem to stick to the basics in the beginning. I pick a type of pepper as a base. This is usually pretty easy because I pick peppers that are |
plentiful in my area markets. You don’t want to base your sauce on some obscure hybrid pepper that is only available in Cucamonga and cost an arm and a leg and may only be available in months ending in "e" when the lunar cycle coincides with Aquarius. This would be silly because you would wind up with something that may just be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. And then what if your sauce becomes popular. Kind of limits your sales possibilities now doesn’t it. After I put together my base ingredients (usually peppers, vinegar, salt, and a liquid), I cook up a small batch to get the flavor right. You need the right proportion of vinegar and salt so that they don’t overpower the peppers but still give you the necessary preservative effect. As a rule of thumb I will grind up my fresh peppers with a meat grinder and put them in a one gallon pail. I use just enough vinegar to cover the peppers. Any more and you start to get a real "tart" sauce. |
And also as a rule of thumb, for every cup of vinegar I use 2 tablespoons of salt. Try to use kosher salt or sea salt. Table salt has added iodine and sometimes corn starch to retard the caking effect of humidity. Now you are ready to cook your sauce. You need to get your sauce up to over 185 degrees Fahrenheit for a minimum of 15 minutes to retard bacterial growth. This gives you the perfect opportunity to get your bottles or some other vessel ready to pack your sauce in. You will want to sterilize your bottles in a hot water bath. Boil them for 15 minutes also to kill any bacterial growth.
When your sauce is completely cooked you have a decision to make. You have to ask yourself what consistency you want your sauce to be. Do you want it thick and chunky or smooth and water-like? If you go by the market as a whole, cayenne or tobasco peppers usually are used to make a watery style sauce, while habanero or |