Hot Sauce Heaven

With Thanksgiving already behind us (where did the Fall go?!), and the Christmas holiday fast approaching, visions of my beautiful garden seem like distant memories.  I find myself already dreaming about the new layout I am going to try, and how I may be growing some special varieties of heirloom tomatoes….But, I digress.  The end of the growing season was a plentiful one this year and I found myself with piles and piles of jalapeños and habaneros.  And you can only eat so many Bacon Wrapped Cheddarwurst Jalapeño Poppers, right?

Habaneros! My two amazing plants
this year gave me more than
60 peppers!

So, what better way is there to preserve the freshness of those little beauties than making some hot sauce?  There are a few chefs I always turn to when I want good recipes that utilize hot peppers.  One of them is Food Network Superstar, Bobby Flay.  The other is a local Chicago chef and owner of one of my favorite restaurants in the city, Frontera Grill - - Chef Rick Bayless.  Both of them have a deft hand at turning what most people consider just a condiment into the star of the show.  Both of these recipes are courtesy of their genius.  Try a batch and see if your friends go crazy for them like mine did.  They would make completely awesome stocking stuffers!

Jalapeño Hot Sauce

The chopped jalapeños and
onions in saucepan

You can actually buy a bottle of the Mesa
Grill Jalapeño Hot Sauce online, but it will set you back $9.95 for 5 oz.  Thank goodness I can make it at home because this stuff is so addicting I'd go broke for sure.  To get started, heat up 2 Tablespoons of the oil in a medium saucepan.  You are going to be cooking everything in this pot so be sure it is large enough to hold all of the ingredients.  Add the onions and jalapeños and cook until they start to soften.  Add in the garlic and let that heat just long enough until you start to smell the garlic.  The recipe says 30 seconds, but the key is that you just don't want to brown it.

After the peppers have cooked
add the remaining ingredients
and blend! 

Add in the vinegar and water and bring the whole mixture to a simmer.  I didn't have the rice vinegar that the recipe calls for on hand so I used apple cider. I think it added a nice tang to the finished product.  Cover the pot, and let it cook for 10 minutes.  Turn off the heat and transfer the entire mixture to a blender or food processor.  Add in the remaining oil, salt, honey and cilantro and blend until smooth.  This will depend on how coarsely you chopped your ingredients, and how thick you like your hot sauce.  I pulsed mine for at least a minute or two until I got a very liquid final product.  This isn't a salsa or a dip, so it should be very smooth and have uniform consistency.

You can see the little specks from
the cilantro in the sauce.  It's the most
beautiful green color!

Always be careful when blending hot food - it expands when you blend it so use caution and start slowly.  One other very important note - - you have to use fresh cilantro for this recipe.  There is no substitute for the fresh herb in this application.  It lends the finished product an amazing fresh and citrusy flavor which compliments the heat from the chilies and the vinegary bite.  I really can't say enough about how good this sauce is!

Place the blended mixture into bottles (or some other container) with a lid and refrigerate.  You are only going to use a little bit of the sauce at a time, as a condiment, so small bottles or Weck jars would work the best.  I found these cute hot sauce bottles online and thought they made the perfect packaging for gifting the sauces to friends and co-workers, but they are not at all necessary.

After sitting in the fridge, the sauce does separate so give the container a good shake (like a vinaigrette) before you use it.  I even made several batches to use up the peppers I kept harvesting (they just kept coming!), and have placed ziplock baggies (the snack size) of the sauces in my freezer.  Once my bottles get low I can just thaw them out and refill so I can keep enjoying the bounty of the pepper harvest all winter long!

Finished bottles of both hot sauces ready to be given to family and friends
(If you feel like sharing!) 

Jalapeño Hot Sauce 
(Recipe from Bobbyflay.com)
6 Tbs Canola Oil
1 small Onion, chopped
10 Jalapeños, stemmed, seeded and coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 cups rice vinegar (I used apple cider)
1 cup water
2 tsp Kosher salt
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup cilantro leaves

Beautiful habaneros from my garden!

Habanero Hot Sauce
If you like things a bit more spicy, and want to kick it up a notch (or 10…) then this Habanero hot sauce recipe will be perfect.  I should tell you that you can also buy this one already made, but apparently only a case at a time?  Not sure who needs THAT much hot sauce, but its good to know that  there are people out there who do!  :)

I learned a new technique while making this recipe for roasting whole garlic cloves.  I used to think you had to to do it in the oven, a whole head of garlic at a time.  No sir! Now I use this technique for making garlic compound butter for garlic bread, for dolloping on top of steaks, baked potatoes, pretty much anything ….

Roasted garlic cloves start to
soften and blacken in spots.
They also smell delicious! 

You just take the garlic, unpeeled, and put it in a dry (aka - no oil!) skillet over medium heat. Take a pair of tongs and turn the cloves regularly until they are soft and blacked in spots.  Depending on the size of your cloves that should take about 10 - 15 minutes.  And that's all you need to do for soft, roasted amazing garlic!  Set it aside and let it cool so you can peel it.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine the carrot, onion and stemmed habaneros with the vinegar and one cup of water.  Partially cover the pan and simmer over medium-low heat until the carrots are tender, about 10 minutes.  Unlike the jalapeño mixture in the previous recipe, you need to be very careful not to breath in the steam from the mixture while it is cooking because it is pretty lethal.  Once it is cooked, pour it into a blender or food processor.

Add the peeled roasted garlic, salt and sugar.  Blend until smooth.  If the mixture is too thick the recipe as written says to add water but I've never had to do that.  I would guess that would only be necessary if you let the mixture cook down and thicken further on the stovetop.

You can pour the finished sauce into bottles (or some other container) with a lid and refrigerate.  This sauce is pretty potent so only a few dashes are necessary to get the desired burn!  You can use it to heat up BBQ sauces and salsas, or even in pulled pork sandwiches.  Its pretty versatile stuff!  Just use it cautiously!

Habanero Hot Sauce
(Recipe from Rickbayless.com)
5 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1/2 cup peeled, roughly chopped carrot
1/2 cup roughly chopped white onion
12 medium (5 ouces) orange habanero chiles, stemmed
1 cup apple cider vinegar
About 2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar

The finished habanero hot sauce is smooth and fiery hot!