Some Real Heat in the Kitchen: Homemade Hot Sauce, Batch #00

I have developed a recurring craving for Buffalo wings, especially while watching or attending sporting events. I used to be pretty ambivalent about them. They didn’t have much meat. They were messy. And, I didn’t care too much for spicy food. Etc., etc.

But, after having a batch of good wings in Charlottesville one summer, every once in awhile a little sensation would develop on my palate asking for some more of those sweet and spicy flavors. As I began to cave into these cravings more often, the cravings only grew stronger until I was ordering them out regularly. I've heard heroin works in a similar fashion.

I know there is a whole culture surrounding hot sauces and wing sauces, but I had no idea what made one good, bad, or amazing. This past football season, before one of the Redskins many losses, I decided to find a wing sauce recipe on-line and make some wings. I was surprised to find that many wing sauces are just tinkerings with an off-the-shelf hot sauce base, like Tabasco or Frank’s Hot Sauce.

I realized that I had to go one step further back in the process and try to make my own hot sauce if I was going to make a distinctive wing. But, with the football season winding down and despair setting in like a fog over the Redskins viewing area, I never experimented with my own hot sauce.

Walking through my neighborhood grocery store here in Napa the other day, I noticed a hearty selection of different chili peppers. Since I’ve been spending so much time in the kitchen lately, the idea of making a hot sauce came back to me. Plus, with the Super Bowl coming up, it was perfect timing.

Thus began the Hot Sauce Project, Batch #00.

Surprisingly, neither the Bouchon Cookbook nor The French Laundry Cookbook had a hot sauce recipe, so I looked to the internet for a basic hot sauce how-to. This would be my first attempt after all, and I wanted to establish a baseline. Although there were many copycat recipes out there, i.e. make your own Frank’s Hot Sauce at home, I just wanted a helpful and informative recipe. I ended up settling on an Emeril recipe -- "Homemade Hot Sauce" -- from the Food Network’s website.

The most important step, of course, was finding the right peppers. The recipe called for serranos, tabascos, or red jalapenos. This proved more difficult than I anticipated. I found some green serranos, but didn’t want a green sauce. The store also had what looked like red jalapenos, but they were simply labeled as “red chiles.” So, I decided to make a blend. Instead of using 12 red jalapenos, like the recipe called for, I bought ten “red chiles,” three green serranos, and two bright orange habaneros. I just couldn’t resist. If you’ve seen my car, you know I like the color orange. Plus, I knew they'd supply some extra heat if the mysterious "red chiles" weren't hot enough.

Having heard horror stories about people cutting hot peppers and then touching their eyes only to experience a horrible, horrible burning sensation, I kept repeating to myself “don’t touch your eyes, don’t touch your eyes.” I can safely say that I still have full vision in both eyes. The peppers simply got de-stemmed and then chopped crosswise into rings before going into a saucepan, seeds and all. I sautéed them with some garlic, onions, salt, and vegetable oil for a couple minutes before adding two cups of water.

Still battling to learn the proper temperature for a “simmer,” I ended up having to reduce the mixture for about double the recipe time (20 minutes said Emeril) before almost all the water evaporated. (One note: the recipe said to do this reduction in a well ventilated area, so I had a window open and a vent fan over the stove going the entire time.)

(Pepper mixture after reducing for about 40 minutes)

Once the reduction had cooled to room temperature, I transferred it to a blender. I accidentally got a drop of liquid on my finger and, still uncertain about the decision to buy those “red chiles,” I licked it off. Big mistake. It was hot. Really hot. But, other than that little bit of hot sauce naivete, I escaped from the process unscathed.

I started the blending process by just pureeing the mixture for about 15 seconds, until everything got at least a rough mix. Then, with the blender running I poured in one cup of distilled white vinegar. As the vinegar was incorporating, the sauce became smoother and a beautiful orangish-red color. At this point, the recipe said to season with salt to taste. This ordinarily simple instruction took on a whole new meaning when hot sauce was involved. So, with a tall glass of milk on standby, I sampled a drop of sauce and added a little more salt and then promptly drained the glass to kill the spice. The final step was to strain the sauce and discard the cooked peppers.

My timing in deciding to make the sauce was also fortuitous because hot sauces apparently need to age for at least two weeks. I made the sauce on the Monday after the AFC and NFC championship games. So, my sauce won't get the full two weeks, but I figured it would be fine. Also, almost like a jelly or preserve, the hot sauce must go into a sterilized jar for storage. Again turning to the internet, I found a quick method for sterilizing a mason jar I found in the pantry. First, I ran it through the dishwasher on the high temperature setting. After letting it dry, I put it in a 250-degree oven for thirty minutes. I then let it cool to room temperature before pouring in the room temperature sauce. Finally, it went into the back of the refrigerator – out of sight, out of mind.

It’s been a week since I made the sauce and, although I haven’t tasted it, I can already detect some development in the sauce’s aroma. When I first put it in the fridge the vinegar smell and flavor was almost overwhelming, but now it seems to have balanced out a bit. The texture, as seen on the side of the jar, looks about right too. One final note about yield: I only got about a cup and a half of sauce. I probably could have gotten more if I had really pressed the mixture through the strainer at that phase, but I was afraid that doing so might extract even more spice out of the peppers and make the sauce overwhelming or out of balance.

(Hot sauce after one week of aging in the fridge)

Finally, I'd love to hear from any hot sauce junkies out there about different ways to alter/improve on this approach. For example, are there benefits to using different kinds of vinegar? What are the "best" peppers to use? What other flavors do you introduce into your sauces? Etc., etc.

Stay tuned for the final chapter…wings on Super Bowl Sunday.