Vinegar-based hot sauce makers?

Hi all,

We had a good crop of cayenne peppers this year, so I decided to make a couple variants of vinegar-based hot sauce.

1st batch was just some garlic cloves, sliced carrots, black pepper corns and cayenne peppers chucked into some white wine vinegar. I gave each pepper a slice so that the seeds could impart some heat to the vinegar.

2nd batch was garlic and cayenne peppers chopped in a food processor and then cooked in very hot (but not boiling) white wine vinegar and a bit of kosher salt for about 20 minutes and then given a touch of xanthan gum and decanted.

The 1st batch is OK - I substitute it for the malt vinegar I usually put on french fried potatoes - but it has taken on almost none of the heat of the peppers.

The 2nd batch is also OK (although it will never, ever, ever take the place of Tabasco), but I have not found a go-to use for it.


Has anyone done anything similar with interesting (good or bad) results?

As I read the topic I immediately began salivating. I'm a huge hot head.

Yes, I have. Scotch Bonnets, seeds and all, in the blender, some salt and vinegar enough to blend and allow it to flow. It was hot but lost the incredible flavor of the peppers. Now I just freeze them (wash and leave whole) and slice them paper thin for use. (still salivating, heavier now though)

I've also made extract of Scotch Bonnets. I blended the peppers, seeds and all, with some neutral spirits. Allow it to sit for a time for the heat to fully be dissolved in the alcohol. The filter the solids out. It's another flavorless product but with huge heat value. I use it medicinally also. When I was working it was part of my food survival kit that I always had in my lunch cooler. Canned chili isn't high fare. But canned chili loaded with extract @ 5 AM was quite tolerable for breakfast (before heading home - eat on their time). Yup, still salivating heavily.

With jalapenas I slice them maybe 1/8" thick and put them in commercial pickled jalapena juice.

Of course they could also be hung and allowed to dry, then crushed, but that changes the flavor also.

About the alcohol extract... I had a very large amount of green habaneros one year and frost had hit them. What to do with them? Homemade teargas. I did the alcohol extract routine and filtered out the solids. The resulting filtrate I put into a spray bottle and went into a control room spraying as I went. The room cleared out immediately. I was pretty popular that night. :-) Never a dull moment. Hot extract also makes a great rub for aches (seriously!) and if neutral spirits are used put a few drops under the tongue as a pain or cough reliever. The body releases endorphins to combat what it sees as an attack. The effect is almost instantaneous but one can build a tolerance to it so that it no longer works.

LOLing about the teargas... that's good. I always worry about the neighbors downwind when I'm grilling jalapenos for salsa

We've also done the commercial pickling juice thing - eat a container of store-bought sliced peppers, then store our own peppers in the juice. Very handy - my wife taught me that one.

Good to talk to a fellow pepper head!

I never imagined making my own HS, but Tobasco is used on 1-2 of my meals every day. (the bigger bottles are perfect for ASL decants)

I bought some Anaheim pepper plants from the local nursery this spring. I adore roasted chilies laid across my steaks, or on my burgers. Well they never got more than a foot tall all yr and just mowed them down last week. I guess I live on the wrong side of the Mississippi to have good Anaheims over here.