re: Fav. Hot Sauce?

I've been enjoying Iguana Habanero sauce lately. It's hot but not crazy hot and has a really good flavor. It's hard to find but Mo' Hotta Mo' Betta has it. Comes from Costa Rica.

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I've done it this way as well. Pro tip: open the windows in your kitchen. Better yet, do this outside.

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True about the open window. Not so much for me as I've not had an issue doing this in my kitchen with closed doors and windows, but my wife can't handle it and passes through the kitchen holding her breath if heading out to the back porch.

About 2 years ago I decided to dehydrate some ghost peppers and cut about 100 of them in half, placing them on the grates of my warm air dehydrator.

I cranked it on and went in another room for a couple hours and my stepdaughter woke up and went into the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. She didn't stay long, came in the den and with tears in her eyes asked what was going on in the kitchen. I had to move the machine to my back porch and air out the kitchen.

Another Pro Tip:

If you use a pot that is not stainless steel, but coated to boil the hot sauce in, make sure to wash it then fill it with water and bring that water to a boil, dump it and repeat a couple times more.

One time I used a Calaphon pot with the black coating and only washed it when done. The next time I used it was to cook some rice and it took on some of the residual heat left in the pot from boiling the sauce.

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I recommend picking up a $20 pH meter. You're probably fine, but you never know until you know. 4.6 is pretty critical. I test all of my hot sauces because I give a lot away and don't want to be the one responsible for someone else getting ill.

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Thanks for the heads up. I've given away probably a couple hundred pints over the years and nobody has ever gotten sick that I know of from using my pepper sauce, but it doesn't hurt to be safe.

I know I'm real fussy about stuff that is not set in a brine but canned in water. I will only do that in a pressure canner for safety reasons.

A friend of mine, who was totally unfamiliar with the canning process made a large batch of soup one day and called me the next day with a question.

He put the soup in Ball canning jars and secured the lids, put it in a boiling water bath and let them cool overnight, but the lids were bulging the next afternoon. I had to explain to him that processing that type food in jars requires pressure canning to keep bacteria from forming and spoiling the product. Lesson learned and he bought a pressure canner.

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Sounds like my wife when I make a roux.

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My wife loves when I make a roux. She knows something good is going to happen.

Never use hot sauce, just straight ground cayenne pepper. no vinegar involved.

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My ghost pepper plants in the past had only put out a couple peppers, but this year they went nuts and made more fruit than I've ever seen

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My experience with the real hot peppers is that they seem to take a lot longer to develop into producing plants unlike some peppers like jalapeno, Belgian hot wax, etc.

The first year I grew Ghost Peppers didn't see me picking many until damn near fall after being planted in the early spring. Same with the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T's. If they overwinter and come back in the spring, then they will start earlier, but last winter N.O. had several nights well below freezing and I lost all my pepper plants. It's only been the last 6 weeks or so that my habanero peppers have been coming in pretty strong. I'm picking about 50+ a week now with no end in sight.

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We did a side x side taste test of various hot sauces a few years ago and Tapatio had way more flavor than any of the others.

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Interesting. I love blind taste tests.

I'd like to do one with Crystal, Louisiana, Texas Pete and Bull.

I'm wondering if I could tell the difference.

Edit: as an aside, when a thread gets to 4 pages, it has often turned into a shitshow. Impressed this one hasn't.

We have a few pints of pickled green cayenes tehy are small and firey hot. we pureed a pint and made sauce and it is wonderful with that green heat taste. It is soo hot we plan to turn one pint into 2 by adding onion and a couple garlic toes to it.

Crystal
Cajun Power
Louisiana

I'm in Arizona, so that affects some selection availability.

Standard hot sauce, Crystal is good.

Cheap, Tapatio has good flavor and you can buy a jug for cheap here.

Mexican with more variety, El Yucateco.

Caribbean with habanero and mustard based, Secret Aardvark habanero is really good.