ottawa foodies

Decided to try my hand at making hot sauce recently, ended up adapting a Rick Bayless recipe. The results are good enough that I figured I'd share.

Required equipment: electric pressure cooker, stick blender.

Ingredients:

- 12 ripe habanero (Kowloon Market has some really lovely ones in the cooler to the left of the meat counter these days, bright red, so I'm not sure what cultivar, they're not just bonnets, they're not fruity, pretty potent -- a pack of 24 cost me well under $4 and will make about a litre (!) of hot sauce since you only use half the flat per batch)
- 6-8 good-sized cloves garlic, peel still on (I use 3/4 of a head of standard, dirt-cheap supermaket garlic, you know, the three- or five-packs in a stocking)
- one medium to 'that's kinda big' carrot, peeled, cut into one-inch chunks, split those chunks in half lengthwise
- half a good-sized white onion, coarsely chopped; I cut the onion in half from stem to heel, cut off the stem, do two cuts along the length, three along the width
- one cup cider vinegar
- two thirds (2/3) of a cup of water
- two teaspoons salt
- about a quarter teaspoon sugar (to be honest, this seems trivial given the amount of finished product, but it was part of the Bayless recipe and we're talking a fraction of a penny, why not)

1. Preheat a skillet on medium heat, throw your garlic, peel still on, in there, shaking and turning them occasionally, until the peels have a few black toasty/burny spots here and there (about ten minutes); remove and set onto/into a board or bowl to cool
2. While the garlic is cooling, pour your cider vinegar and water into the Instant Pot, followed by the onion and carrot, give a quick stir, close, and set to Manual and drop the time down to THREE (3) minutes.
3. Stem and seed your peppers. Wear rubber gloves! I cut a circle around the stem and pull it out with most of the seeds, then cut the pepper in half.
4. By now, your garlic is cool enough to handle, lop off the heels and peel them, set aside.
5. Your Instant Pot should be beeping soon! Once it does, hit Cancel and release pressure by turning the valve. Once the button's dropped, open her up, throw your peppers in there, quick stir, close it again (it might fight a little, even with the valve open, be patient), close the valve to Sealing, hit Manual, and lower the time to ONE MINUTE and let it do its thing. It won't take long to build up pressure again.
6. Once the cooker beeps again, hit Cancel, and let the pressure come down on its own -- DO NOT OPEN THE VALVE, you'd basically be releasing tear gas into your kitchen.
7. Once the button has dropped (10-20 minutes), open the cooker, throw the salt and sugar in it, plus your peeled garlic, and use a stick blender to liquify thoroughly.

I like to pour it into a container, let it cool, seal it, let it refrigerate overnight, before giving it a stir the next day and bottling. But have a tiny spoon-tip of it while it's fresh out of the cooker if you want to stay awake for a little while.

Total time, prep and cook, per batch is just shy of an hour, for about 500ml of hot sauce. Cost, roughly $3 per batch.

Is this like a Frank's hot sauce?

In texture and colour it's pretty close, and would probably be great on chicken wings, but it carries considerably more heat (and more flavour, those Kowloon peppers are dynamite), has a really nice creep to it. Not quite as vinegary.

I reckon adjusting the amount of carrot would be the best way to adjust the heat level, but I've been squirting it (I pour it into 99-cent 8oz squeeze bottles from Paradis the next day, plastic wrap between the lid and the bottle on the ones I'm storing/gifting) on pretty much everything and to my taste it's just about right. It's a winner on eggs (I mixed some into the yolk in some over-easy eggs, as well as inside a rolled mushroom-parmesan omelette), and stepped up my pizza game last night.

Thank you. I will have to try it. The one I have made in the past contains the following ingredients:

600 gm. Tomatoes
200 gm habeneros, with seeds and skin
400 ml white vinegar
1/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons sea salt.

This gets cooked up and pulverized. I usually use Scotch Bonnet peppers as I think they have more flavour that habeneros but on our trip to Jean Talon market to get the peppers there were not many SB peppers as they were late ripening so I did two batches, one with SB and the other with habeneros. I don't eat the stuff but my husband loves hot sauce. The SB sauce is gone and he loved it. The habenero one proved to be too hot to eat. I have several thoughts on how to tone down the heat but I am waiting for some warm weather so I can do this outside. I don't own a gas mask☺

The gassing was the primary reason I wanted to adapt a version for the pressure cooker. After the pressure dropped on the Instant Pot, not so much as a watery eye when I opened it. I did however put plastic wrap over the pot, with a slit cut into it, to do the stick blending, to avoid spatter/fumes. I don't think this one is remotely too hot to eat, let me know if you do make it and find out otherwise.

The original recipe also claims the carrot will be thoroughly tender after a 10-20-minute simmer, which hasn't been my experience; it's a non-issue with the pressure cooker.

I've used bonnets in the past, and I love their flavour (and relative ubiquity), but I wanted something a little more neutral that would add heat to my food without mostly tasting the sauce, and that was a bit more...soluble than chili flakes. I've got a fridge full of fruitier sauces, mango, peach, whatever, and sauces with more prominent garlic, they've all got their uses.