Hot Sauce Redux

Right before we left for Peru we ran out of hot sauce. Tragic, I know. In our house this is unacceptable since hot sauce, we believe, pretty much goes on everything. Now that I have the time I thought I would restock the old version and experiment with some new additions.

First, I pretty much followed the hot sauce recipe I had up here before with the simple substitutions of 1/2 apple cider vinegar and 1/2 white vinegar instead of all white vinegar and habaneros for serranos. I've finally decided that I don't like apple cider vinegar all that much. I think it overpowers whatever it is put in (including pickles; I discovered this with some B&Bs that I canned) not allowing the other ingredients to shine. I also discovered that, at least with this hot sauce, there is a too hot. If I was making something like Tabasco I'd be less concerned, but here I want to taste the peppers and garlic as well. So, with that in mind I think I'll go back to jalapenos and serranos, more garlic (instead of the 2-3 I wrote before I'd probably up it to 6 cloves), error on the side of less vinegar as I mentioned before (near 2 cups for ~2lbs peppers) and to under season with salt and sugar at first then add more if need be (2-3 tablespoons of sugar to start and 1 tablespoon of salt). 

Here it is again with some modifications:

1.5-2 lbs roasted peppers (jalapenos and serranos work well)

2 cups white vinegar to start (add more to taste)

6 garlic cloves

2-3 tablespoons sugar to start 

1 tablespoon salt to start

I've discovered that recipes like this are really all about playing around...even if they do end up poorly like they did tonight. Oh well, now I think I've got it down! Speaking of playing around...

I also decided to try and make the same hot sauce, but with these amazing dried chile moras from Spice Market in Silver Lake that I found. I learned that they are basically chipotles, but the jalapenos (which are smoked and dried to create chipotles) are just picked younger resulting in a sweeter, more raison like flavor. Of course, since they are smoke, they have a...well...smokey flavor. They smelled delicious in the jar so I couldn't pass them up. I followed my original recipe and since I made the above hot sauce first I decided not to include the apple cider vinegar and go easy on seasoning at first. 

Since the chiles are dried I toasted them in a pan for about a minute and then rehydrated them in boiling water for ~1 hour. After this I followed my basic hot sauce recipe and I think the resulting sauce is great. It's smokey, sweet, and spicy. I threw in some habaneros since I was led to believe moras aren't very spicy....they are. I think I'd leave the habaneros out next time so you can taste the flavor of the chiles better without searing off your taste buds. 

Making both of these was great since I got to practice making hot sauces and learning what about the seasonings are important. These are very easy to play around with in terms of execution and cost!