Make Your Own Hot Sauce

It is rare that you will find someone who loves hot sauce as much as I do. I sample it. I order it from random parts of the world. I try hot sauces made from the 1st and 2nd hottest chillies in the world. I refuse to believe that there is a dish out there (besides cereal) that couldn't be made better without a dash of my favorite hot sauces.
I recently found myself wondering why I will pay 8£ for an imported bottle of hot sauce that I might be able to make myself. I researched recipes and found that it was not a test of know-how, but rather a test of patience. If you pick up a bottle of sauce at the grocery store and read the label, the ingredients are simple. Tabasco for instance: Tabasco peppers, salt, vinegar. It really is that easy! But the true test is the waiting--the aging process. Tabasco is aged for a freakin' long time. It's pungent smell is proof of that! But it is a melded flavor. It's one that took time to build. That will be the true test of this recipe.
I started with a lot of peppers. Three types to be exact. Paprika peppers (not sure the exact type. I bought them here in Germany and they call pretty much any large, red pepper a paprika pepper so if someone can tell me what it is by the picture, I'd appreciate it), Thai chilies and jalapenos. I figured I'd get some great flavor with the paprikas, some tomatoey spice with the Thai chilies and some familiar heat with the jalapenos.
 All of the recipes used were the exact same. The only thing that changed was the type and amount of peppers used so here we go!!!


Ingredients:

• 2lbs Paprika Peppers, 2lbs of Jalapeno Peppers or 1lb of Thai Chilies
• 1/8 Cup White, Distilled Vinegar
• 2tsp Kosher Salt (Don't worry, although the grains are large, there will be plenty of liquid and time to break it down. Plus it won't have that chemical taste of iodized table salt)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
2. Take pepper/chili of your choice and slice it into long, thin strips. There is no wrong way to do this. Size really isn't that important. As long as the pepper is open and exposed.
3. Take 1.5ft-2ft pieces of aluminum foil and place all sliced peppers into the center of the foil. Lightly wrap/cup foil around peppers in foil but leave package open.
4. Add vinegar and salt to top of peppers. 
5. Make an air tight packet surrounding the peppers.
6. Place packet in the oven on a sheet pan for 40 minutes
7. Remove from oven and let packet cool until you can handle it safely.
8. Place peppers and all juices into a food processor. Pulse until you have a coarse puree. If you see seeds, that's fine, they won't make it through the final step.
9. Place all contents into a trusted zip-lock bag. Remove all air from the bag to prevent molding.
10. Place bag in a cool, dark place.
11. WAIT. Wait 3-4 weeks. This is the hardest part.

There are three things you are doing to bring flavor to the recipe here. The peppers contain small pores inside--you can see them if you look closely. They contain an water, oils and the fruity flavor of the pepper. 

1. You add salt to bring the water out of the pepper and into your sauce. The water makes the sauce saucy and also contains a lot of the flavor that makes hot sauce taste like hot sauce.
2. The vinegar you added will add tanginess as well as dissolve a lot of the oils the are contained within the pores of the pepper. These oils would be locked into those pores without the vinegar breaking them down and making the flavors obvious to your taste buds.
3. Waiting. If you wait the suggested 3-4 weeks, you will be handsomely rewarded with a flavor that is nothing like the original flavor of the pepper. It will resemble it, but be so much more complex. It's the 'day after theory'. You know when you make a pot of chilly and eat it and it's pretty good? Then you warm it up the next day and have another bowl and it's GREAT, that's the 'day after theory'. Sauces meld over time. This one is no exception. A lot of websites called this process fermentation, but there is very little sugar and no yeast that I know of with which to create alcohol, so I wouldn't really call it fermenting, but whatever. You know what the sauce is doing. It's aging and gettin' good.

3-4 Weeks Later

Press the puree with a spoon to get out more sauce.

1. Pull baggies of the cool, dark place and be amazed! Some extra liquid may be visible. The color may have changed slightly. A spicy smell (NOT ODOR) may be noticeable from outside the bag. If it is an odor, or it smells rotten, discard and try again. Maybe a nasty bacteria got in there and messed it up. If that bacteria survived vinegar, sodium and the harsh oils of a jalapeno, you don't want it in your body. So toss it out.
2. Gather a wire strainer and a long-term storage container. Place strainer into container and pour contents of your bag into the strainer.
3. Wait some more (it's already been 3 weeks, what's another 30 minutes going to hurt?). The juices from your puree will drip through the strainer and into your container. There is plenty more in the puree, so stir it up. As you stir, more juice will drip through.
4. Seal the container and discard the puree (unless you used Thai chilies. In that case, congratulations on making your first Thai chili paste. Place the puree in a separate container and save it for your next Asian meal. It'll be awesome!)
5. Use your new, homemade hot sauce on anything and everything! It's better than store-bought, but wait, read on. There's a down side to this.

There is a huge negative to this hot sauce. HUGE!!! This crap is expensive! Think about it: You just used 2lb of peppers. My jalapenos cost about $7.00 per pound. That's $14 for a yield of about .5-.75 ounces of hot sauce. A small bottle of Tabasco is 5.5 ounces. A large bottle of many other brands is about 7oz. You do the math, it doesn't add up.
Large hot sauce companies use millions of pounds of peppers and thousands of square feet to make and process their hot sauces.  I doubt any of you have access to those kinds of resources--I know I don't! So I don't mean to be such a downer, but for the average working family, this hot sauce is good, but it's just not practical to make all the time. There are so many websites out there that have thousands of varieties of hot sauces. There are probably even local growers in your community that use their B-grade peppers to make their own sauces. Try those out. Definitely make your own when you can, but be realistic about it and don't toss money down the drain. Ugh, what a downer I am.

3 weeks of waiting for a few ounces of greatness.