Emergency Hot Sauce

Does hot sauce make you cry?  For me, the LACK of hot sauce makes me cry!  I can't say that I use it on everything ...but I use it a lot.

If you are in a city (even Buenos Aires, nowadays) you won´t have any trouble popping-out for a fine bottle of pepper.  However, down on the ranch, I'm 200 miles from anything acceptable.

The Yanq is, however, pretty careful with his stores and supplies ...so there is always some capiscum stashed away somewhere.  But some things need a dash of liquid pepper rather than a pinch.

Whaddya do if you only have ground red pepper and you wanna make a splash?  Can you make a hot sauce from powdered peppa?

Sí se puede, señora!  After perusing the internet on my trusty, tiny, Blackberry screen ...I found a few recipes and girded my loins for a try at making a bottle out of an envelope.

It worked out great!  I reckoned that all the recipes generally called for a teaspoon of ground hot pepper to every 100ml of liquid ...then the addition of something sticky and rather sweet.  Salt and additional spices can then be added to taste.

I rummaged around and found a hermetically sealed mylar envelope of ground habanero pepper from god-only-knows how many years ago.  Since I love old bottles, there's always something cool in that regard ...I chose a neat old apothecary bottle of approximately 300ml.

As to the sticky-sweet component, I thought about the fruit preserves and other things I'd read in my research ...but since we are surrounded by beekeepers in the campo, I thought I'd avail myself of some of the wild honey that someone gifted me with.

Since I wasn´t sure if the stuff wasn't headed for the drain ...I didn't get too fancy with spices.  I had some nice garlic powder so that and some salt was all I was prepared to bet on this long-shot preparation.

The liquid, I decided, would be about 3 parts apple cider vinegar and 2 parts water.  I knew I would need some acid but I wanted pepper not pucker.

So here goes my recipe for 300ml of hot sauce:

• Grab a saucepan and add 120ml of water and 180ml of cider vinegar.
• Warm the liquid to almost boiling.
• Add 2 teaspoons of honey and stir until it melts into the liquid.
• Add 3 teaspoons of ground hot pepper.
•  Add a teaspoon of garlic powder.
• Add a teaspoon of salt.
• Stir well and let the mixture return to room temperature.
• Pour into a bottle and cap it with a good stopper.
• You're done.

Sheesh!  That stuff is HOT.  Not too acidy.  The sweetness is detectable but not overly so.  The garlic is probably doing a lot to round-out the taste ...but no one would guess it was an ingredient.  Just enough salt to bring up the flavor.

The color was exactly the color of the pepper: more brown than red.  Very whiskey-colored but muddy not translucent.  Other ground habanero powders I've had were screaming red ...I´m pretty sure that would make a fine red colored sauce.  I was really surprised that 3 teaspoons would completely color the sauce and not end up looking weak and somewhat clear.

After a few hours, the solids separated and settled to the bottom ...but still the liquid was fully colored.  All the recipes say that the stuff gets hotter and hotter with time.  Maybe I should filter the mud out after awhile!

Don't worry, Alan!  The Aeropress is safe!

Anyhoo, I won´t be giving up on store-bought and hand-crafted pepper sauce ...but it's nice to know that in a pinch, I can get a splash.  If you try the recipe, lemme know how it turns out for you!