Hot Sauce!

Somebody requested a hot sauce recipe over in the pepper forum. I posted the following, then thought I'd post the recipes here too and see if we couldn't get a good thread going!

What's your favorite hot sauce recipe? With all the chiles in that patch (50 plants, what was I thinking??), I should have plenty to try a bunch of different things!

The easiest kind of hot sauce to make is called "pique." It's just hot peppers steeped in vinegar, but it makes a very colorful & tasty gift. I've also done something similar by mincing a mixture of peppers into a sort of relish for use in cooking -- just put them in a glass jar and cover with vinegar, then store in the refrigerator.

I have this great cookbook by Linda Ziedrich, called _The Joy of Pickling_. Here are 2 recipies from her book.

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"Pique"

Place the following ingredients into a clean 12 oz. bottle:

12 medium-size cayenne peppers, or some combination that suits you
4 garlic clover, halved lengthwise
12 whole black peppercorns
1/8 tsp. pickling salt
about 1 cup cider vinegar, enough to cover the peppers & fill the bottle (use a funnel)

Close the bottle with a nonreactive cap or cork. Give the bottle a shake to dissolve the salt. Store in the refrigerator or another cool place. Sauce is ready after several days, but will get hotter as it sits. Until the peppers lose their potency, you can top up the bottle with fresh vinegar as needed.

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Here's the hot sauce recipe that I've made several times, using different combinations of peppers and even different colors of tomatoes.

"Tomato-Pepper Sauce"

4 1/2 pounds tomatoes, coarsely chopped (or 3 1/2 cups tomato puree)
2 cups seeded & minced or ground red (or other) chile peppers
3 1/2 cups distilled white vinegar or cider vinegar
6 garlic cloves, mashed
2 teaspoons pickling salt

In a nonreactive saucepan, bring to a boil the chopped tomatoes or tomato puree, peppers, and 1 1/2 cups of the vinegar. Boil the mixture until it is reduced by half.

Puree the mixture in a food mill or blender. Return the puree to the saucepan. Add the garlic, salt, and remaining 2 cups vinegar. Boil the mixture, stirring often, until it's as thick as you like.

Ladle the sauce into pint or half-pint mason jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Close the jars with hot two-piece caps, and process the jars for 15 min. in a boiling water bath. Store the cooled jars in a cool, dry, dark place.

Or, pour the sauce into sterile bottles, cap or cork the bottles, and store them in the refrigerator.

Makes about 2 pints.