Good morning, Gardeners. It’s been cold downheah this week, with several mornings in the low 20s, but Spring is right around the corner. I started pepper seeds last weekend, so my 2020 garden is officially underway!
I’ve been thinking about this diary for a couple of weeks, and, since I don’t have much going on as far as actual “gardening” at the moment, I thought I’d do one about how I make hot sauce. Many inspirational thanks to estreya for her “How To Use It-Lemons!” diary last December about making limoncello! Y’all can revisit it here.
I love hot sauce...as a current TV commercial says, “I put that sh#t on everything!”
Y’all might remember that in 2018, I decided to make some hot sauce from fermented (more on that later) Fatalii/Scotch Bonnet peppers. It looked like this:
This batch turned out well, but, DANG, WAS IT HOT!! I couldn’t stomach it. Gettin’ old, I guess, but you could use this stuff as paint stripper!! I gifted it to a couple of “hot freaks” at work.
So...I decided to fall back to a pepper that I could actually eat: Hinkelhatz. In Amish, “Hinkelhatz” translates to “chicken heart”, due to its shape, and is a bit hotter than a jalapeno heat-wise.
The peppers fermented for about 2 months before they were made into sauce. Learn more about the fermenting process HERE. I lost a couple of jars to spoilage (mold), mainly due to inexperience/operator error. For 2020, I bought some special fermenting lids and glass weights from this place. They also have some helpful videos on how to ferment different things.
I use hot peppers in several different ways. They’re great to just eat fresh with a meal or sliced in a salad. I also cold pickle jalapeno slices for chili, nachos, pizza, or burgers. Then, there’s the classic Southern “pepper sauce” using just pickled cayenne peppers, sometimes with green tomatoes; I love this “pepper vinegar” on turnip greens, peas, and beans, and with cornbread, naturally!
Here’s how I make my Hinkelhatz Sauce:
2 quarts fermented Hinkelhatz peppers
½ cup granulated sugar
12 oz each, lime juice and apple cider vinegar
½ tsp citric acid
A pinch of xanthan gum at the end as a thickener.
First, drain the peppers through a colander, reserving some of the liquid. Pull the stems and toss the peppers in the blender, along with some of the fermenting liquid. (I recommend wearing latex gloves throughout this whole process, btw) Kick the blender up to “puree”, and let it go for about 15-20 minutes. Combine the lime juice, vinegar, and sugar in a pot; start heating til the sugar is dissolved; drink a beer in the meantime.
Once the peppers are sufficiently pureed (another beer may be required), the only tedious part of this process begins: straining. The fermentation process not only helps kill off bad microbes and concentrates the flavor of the peppers, but it also goes a long way in breaking down the seeds and skin. However, there will still be a lot of pulp in the mixture, even after 20 minutes in the blender; straining is essential for a smooth sauce.
I’ll use the same straining method the next time around, but, additionally, I think I’ll squeeze the pulp through cheese cloth to extract that last little bit of goodness.
**Just as an afterthought, I tasted both the fresh and fermented peppers, and could detect no difference in their heat levels, so I don’t think that fermenting concentrates the heat.**
Where was I? Okay, now the pepper extract gets added to the pot with the sugar/lime juice/vinegar mixture and brought up to a full boil, then back off to a slow boil for about 10 minutes. Drink another beer. Let the mixture cool down, and put it back in the blender; let it go for about 5 minutes. Add a pinch, and I mean a pinch, of xanthan gum, and let it go in the blender for another 5 minutes. This step ensures that the sauce is well blended and a bit thicker, thus less likely to separate when bottled. I like my hot sauce to have a bit of “body” to it—not thin and runny, like Tabasco. Neat article about them HERE. Interesting tidbit: their sauce is made from Tabasco peppers and salt, aged for about 3 years in old whiskey barrels. Time for another beer. Pour the mixture off into a glass bowl, let it cool down, cover, and let it hang out in the fridge for about a week before bottling.
I got these 5 oz bottles off of Amazon (24 for about $17). I like them because they have those neat little plastic “shaker” thingys on top!
The whole process takes about 4 hours, including beer and bottling, and yielded about 40 oz. of sauce. I freelanced a bit on the 2nd batch, and it turned out to be sweeter and more citrusy, but quite good all the same. Here’s the finished product:
These 2 bottles, from the 1st batch, are promised to a couple of very dear friends of mine, who are no doubt wondering why they haven’t received them yet… ;(
If I say so myself, and I do, this is some pretty good hot sauce! It has a deep, rich flavor, and a heat that is apparent, but not overwhelming. As I noted earlier, Hinkelhatz peppers are a bit hotter than a jalapeno, coming in at 5K-30K on the Scoville Scale. By comparison, the Fatalii/Scotch Bonnet peppers I used in 2018 top out around 350K!
I have beefed up my fermenting operation for 2020 with the addition of special lids that automatically vent the jars, and and more glass weights—these are necessary to keep the peppers submerged in the liquid. I will now be able to ferment 8 qt. jars at once. I think I’ll try my hand at some green sauce, and maybe make a stab at my own version of Sriracha sauce!
Again, thanks to estreya for introducing us to the “How To Use IT” format! Maybe it’s something that you future diarists here at SMGB will consider…?
I hope y’all enjoyed this edition of The SMGB! As of Thursday, I have pepper seeds starting to sprout, so I’m a happy camper!!
Oh...a question for you “flowerheads”: Should my amaryllis (which I have not yet divided) be putting up new growth in mid-January? It seemed to be unaffected by the 3 days of lows in the mid 20s….
What’s going on in your part of the gardening world?