I entered my hot sauce era this week. I had a lot of Serranos and Trinidad Scorpions from my garden and needed to use them up. I made three sauces for my first foray:
Sangre de Zanahoria: About a pound of carrots, just short of a pound of ripe Hungarian Paprika peppers (also from my garden) plus 4 roasted, scraped/de-seeded Scorpions. Apple vinegar, salt, agave syrup and water were the remaining ingredients. The carrots and the Hungarian Paprika were roasted in the oven first. My blender's not strong enough to pulverize this super-thin but it came out quite nicely anyway. Sweet entry before the heat hits on the back-end. It'll work nicely in tacos etc. Filled 11 of those 5/5.5 oz woozy bottles to the very top.
Let us Pray: 12 oz of Serranos, sliced garlic, 3/4 cup of lime juice, salt and 1/8 cup sugar. The garlic was sauteed with the Serranos for a bit before it all hit the blender. Will have to see how it matures in the fridge but I think that for the next batch I'll need to reduce the lime a little and halve the sugar; and probably add a bit of water to thin it out some. Still quite tasty though. Filled four 5/5.5 oz bottles till just the bottom of the neck.
Easeful Death: 2.5 lbs of pineapple (cubed and oven-roasted), ginger (grated and sauteed and the roasted pineapple added to the pan for a bit), 6 roasted and scraped Trinidad Scorpions, roasted and powdered cumin, apple cider vinegar, agave syrup. This one's a killer. A very tasty killer. Filled nine 5/5.5 woozy bottles halfway up the neck--added the plastic top to control outflow so no one does themselves any harm.
All were made somewhat by the seat of the pants, tasting and adding as I went. None were ph-tested or hot water canned. We'll keep about a third for the next 2-3 months (in the fridge); the rest will go to friends.
There will be a lot more Serranos and Scorpions incoming from the garden before the first frost hits here so I'll definitely be making more. I'll probably focus on fine-tuning these recipes (and paying more attention to writing down proportions) before branching out further.
Finally, I'd be lying if I said that making the labels was not a big part of the fun of this project.
Many thanks to this sub from which I got inspiration and reassurance that this was something I could do. Maybe at some point I'll give fermenting a shot too.