How To Make Hot Sauce

How To Make Hot Sauce Overview:

Learning how to make hot sauce at home can be as easy, or as difficult as you want it to be. There is a variety of different methods and ingredients you can use as well as the option of fermented hot sauce over non fermented. 

In this article we will be going over a simple method on how to make hot sauce which does not involve any fermentation. This is a very basic recipe in which you can add you own fruits or vegetables to tailor it to your taste. 

So let’s go through how to make hot sauce! 

Some Basic things you will need to make Hot Sauce:

• 2L Blender
• Immersion/Stick Blender
• Saucepan
• Frying pan
• Cutting Board
• Knives
• Jars or bottles
• Funnel
• pH Meter (optional for home use)
• No-rinse Sanitiser (optional for home use)

Ingredients:

• Your choice of Chilli (Habanero, Cayenne, Jalapeno) – 250g
• Your choice of base (tomato, carrot, capsicum, mango, any fruit or veg) – 500g
• Fresh Garlic – 4-5 cloves 
• Salt – to taste
• Pepper – to taste
• Olive Oil
• Brown Sugar – 1 tsp
• Brown Onion – 150g
• Apple Cider Vinegar – 250ml

The amount of each ingredient is up to you! We recommend using 1/3 -1/4 of the total ingredient volume as apple cider vinegar. This adds flavour, pH stability and helps create a good viscosity. 

Method:

Step 1: Preparation

Stem the chillis by breaking off the stem or cutting it with a knife. Try not to cut off too much of the chilli. You can also cut the chilli in half (long ways) and remove the seeds if you prefer not to have them or if you want to tone down the heat. (We leave them in).

Add your chilli and fruit/veg to a blender and puree into a fine paste. You can add in a little apple cider vinegar to help the process. 

Dice the onion and garlic.

Set out the Salt, Pepper and Apple cider vinegar ready to go. 

Step 2: Cooking

Add the onion to the frying pan with the Brown Sugar and a dash of olive oil, cook for a minute or so on a low/medium heat. We dont want to brown the onion, just soften it. 

Add the garlic to the mix to activate its flavour. cook for another minute. Once cooked, set aside to cool.

In a separate saucepan, we want to add in our chilli puree on a low heat. We also want to pour in our apple cider vinegar. Allow this to slowly come to a simmer. 

Blend your garlic and onion mix into a puree. Add a little apple cider vinegar to help the process if needed.

Add in the blended puree to the saucepan with the chilli, along with your salt and pepper. 

At this point we want to bring your sauce mix up to a nice simmer, allowing it to cook for around 20 minutes. This allows for the flavours to develop. 

If you have a stick blender, now is a great time to blend everything while it cooks. The more you blend, the better consistency you will have. If you find the sauce to be a little thick, you can add in more vinegar, or even some water. Adding in water will raise the pH level instead of lowering it (like vinegar does). For optimal storage life, you want a pH of around 3.8.

We like the Bev Doctor for pH Testing.

If you dont have a stick blender, you can always pour the entire mix into your 2L blender and give it a good minute or 2. (CAUTION: hot liquid can create pressure in your blender, ensure you let the mixture cool or allow ventilation while blending) if you removed your mixture to blend it, add it back to the saucepan to cook until the temperature reaches near boiling point.

Once you are happy with your sauce, give it a taste. add something to it, play around with it. its your sauce! be creative!

Step 3: Bottling

Now its time to bottle!

Using a glass jar or bottle, you need to Sterilise and Sanitise. This is VERY important to ensure your sauce doesn’t end up going bad. 

Add your vessels to a pot of boiling water, ensure they fill up with the water and allow them to boil for 10 minutes. Once they have been boiled take them out and use a no-rinse sanitser to make sure there are no nasties left (this is an extra precaution, for home use you can skip this). 

Using a funnel, fill your vessels with your sauce, we recommend a Piston Funnel if you want to invest! Otherwise a kitchen funnel will do just fine.

Once filled, cap and shake! (shaking allows the sauce to cover the inside of the lid, this helps prevent bacteria growth.)

Allow your sauce to cool before use. 

Step 4: Enjoy!

Now its time to enjoy your sauce. Let family and friends try it too. Get feedback, refine your recipe and make the perfect sauce. Remember, Hot sauce isn’t always about the heat. Creating a great flavour for a sauce you can enjoy time and time again is equally, if not more important. 

Learning how to make hot sauce can sometimes be a little confusing. This simple reciepe should have you the foundations to build from to create your own masterpiece. 

Our first hot sauce was our Habanero & Mango flavour. This recipe was created over 6 months with countless revisions and taste testings. Today it is one of our most popular sauces. You can’t rush art. 

I hope you found some value in this how to make hot sauce guide!

Check out our other articles for more ways you can make your own spicy creations.