Homemade Hot Sauce

Hot sauce can accompany a broad range of foods, everything from fried foods to ice cream.  The exact roots of a hot spiced sauce vary, but one thing that we know for sure there is no shortage of them on the market now. Some restaurants even have walls of hot sauces, many with creative and colorful names. Fire and hell and ripping are often themes on the labels.  This preparation uses some very hot peppers balanced with some very flavorful peppers.  The goal here is a hot, a very hot, sauce that has complex flavors in addition to the heat.

Ingredients:

12 Habanero Peppers

10 Red Hot Peppers 

7 Jalapeño Peppers

5 Hot Banana Peppers

4 Cayenne Peppers

1/2 cup Kosher Salt

2 cups white vinegar

5 Habanero Peppers

3 Jalapeño Peppers

Step One:

Wearing protective gloves, cut the tops off of the the peppers discarding the green stems. Quarter the Red Hot Peppers. Place the peppers in a quart sized jar.  Cover the peppers with kosher salt.  Lid the jar and shake it to ensure each pepper piece has engaged the salt. Place the jar in a cool dry place, and wait 3 days to a week; shake the jar daily. 

Step Two:

Add the vinegar to the jar  and shake vigorously. Lid place the jar in a cool dry place and wait 3 days.

Step Three:

Pour the contents of the jar into a blender. Add the fresh Habanero and Jalapeño peppers and puree the mixture until smooth.  Strain the mixture through cheese cloth.   This will separate out the pepper pieces from the liquid. This can take up to one hour. Hot sauce can be both fine and chunky. The straining allows the cook the control choosing the degree of chunkiness desired. 

Step 4: 

Mix back in the amount of the strained bits that you desire then bottle and enjoy. 

Barbecue Sauce

Barbecue Sauce is a hallmark of summer cooking, an always on-hand dipping sauce, and an ingredient in various recipes. There are many types of barbecue sauces such as the tomato based (recipe below), vinegar based, and asian style.  The tomato based sauce recipe below is prepared with a homemade tomato ketchup base. A lot of recipes online, and in cookbooks actually have commercial tomato ketchup or catsup as an ingredient. 

The Ingredients 

1 can (28-oz) crushed tomatoes

2/3 cups white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2/3 cup white distilled vinegar

1 table spoon Zatarain's Creole Seasoning 

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1/16 teaspoon ground clove

1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

1 shot of whiskey

1/4 teaspoon Chili power

1/4 teaspoon ground Cayenne 

1/4 teaspoon garlic power

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/32 teaspoon celery seed

1/4 teaspoon allspice

Step One: Homemade Tomato Ketchup

Pour the crushed tomatoes in a  4 quart sauce pan. Add both sugars and the white vinegar. Heat the pan using medium heat. Stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the Zatarain's Creole Seasoning.

Step Two:  BBQ Sauce

Add the other ingredients one by one stirring after each addition.
Bring the mixture to a boil stirring occasionally, and then reduce to a simmer. You may notice  a foamy substance appears on the surface. Remove this by gently spooning  the foam to a bowl to discard.  This foam will otherwise cloud the sauce. This process of clarifying is done with stocks, broths, jams, jellies, candy among other things.  Continue a vigorous simmer for five minutes. 

Step Three: Reduction 

Simmer the sauce uncovered for 1 1/2 hours or longer stirring occasionally. 

Or

Place the sauce in a slow cooker set to the low or warm setting, stir occasionally. Let it reduce for 3 1/2 hours or longer stirring occasionally.

Bastardized Kimchi

Kimchi is a wonderful condiment, flavoring, and seasoning. It's a Korean food staple. There are hundreds of different types of Kimchi. Some are strong in flavor, some are mild, some are spicy, super spicy, white and red.  In it's essence it's fermented vegetable, fruit or fungi. The range is endless, and Kimchi is highly regional and even subregional. Recipes can be honored and correspondingly guarded family treasures.  This recipe is not one of those. Below you will find a completely bastardized version of Kimchi. It will make some purists cringe in it's sacrilegious preparations. It uses supermarket ingredients. Guess what, it turned out delicious.  It's a play on the Yangbaechu Kimchi recipe found at Korean Baspang, but not.  It ended up being Bastardized Kimchi, if you make it try it on a hot dog, hamburger (veggie burger), or in a soup. Seriously, try it.

Step 1: Step One Veggies

Buy a 2 pound or so head of green cabbage. Remove the core and cut it in to 2" pieces. Place the pieces in a bowl. Salt with 1/4 cup of non-ionized table or sea salt. Mix together and and let it wilt for 2-3 hours. After every hour pour off the liquid and mix the cabbage with your hands.

Fifteen minutes before the final hour slice up 1 cup dikon radish.  If you can't find this at your grocer, then  skip it. You can substitute carrots, and/or add carrots in addition to this radish. Cut the radish in to 1 1/2" strips, about the size of short shoestring small french fries.  Then grate 2 tablespoons of ginger. Using a ginger grater like the one below makes this task go amazingly fast. 

Next mince or smash and chop 5, or as many as you want cloves of garlic.  Rinse the cabbage in a colander  and then using a salad spinner, spin the cabbage dry and return the cabbage to a large bowl.   Mix the cabbage with the above ingredients and let them sit.

Step Two: Bastard Paste 

Well Kimchi is traditionally made with a Korean chili pepper paste made from chili pepper flakes called gochugaru.  There is no substitute for this paste. However, Bastard Paste pictured here isn't a bad approximation. The traditional paste is made from letting gochugaru bloom in water for a period of time.  The flakes and the water make a paste. Without this paste, choices are slim. Some use cayenne pepper flakes or powder. The results is a less red and super spicy, or even a too spicy, Kimchi.  The challenge in this bastardized preparation was how to keep the pepper taste without the killer heat.  

The challenge birthed bastard paste. A 3:1 + 1/16 mixture of paprika, red pepper flakes (Cayenne) and spicy spanish pimenton. Yes, it seems strange to have spanish pimenton and not gochugaru, blame the TV Show Made in Spain.   It's basically a smoked spicy paprika, and a little goes a long way. For this preparation mix 3 tablespoons of regular paprika, 1 tablespoon of red chili pepper flakes and 1/16 teaspoon of spicy spanish pimenton.  Mix them together and add 1/2 cup of water and wait 30 minutes for the sauce to bloom. 

Step Three: Non-Fish sauce Fishy Sauce

A lot of Kimchi recipes contain dried shrimp. The common substitute is fish sauce. Fish sauce was on hand, but the desire was to make this so vegetarians and vegans could try it.   How to make a salty rich fish-like sauce.  The solution was soy sauce and  dried seaweed.  Using 1/3 cup of soy sauce add 1 table spoon of dried seaweed. Let it bloom for 20-30 mins.  Press the mixture through a strainer over a bowl, and reserve.   The soy sauce will  be fragrant; it should smell fishy. 

Step Four: Combining and Jarring

 Mix the Bastard Paste and seaweed soy sauce into the cabbage mixture. Gloves are recommended, or a large spoon. Let the mixture rest for about 20-30 minutes. After that time jar the mixture and place it at room temperature for 3-5 days, depending on the level of fermentation sought. After three days open the lid to release the pressure and then reseal, this is to avoid jars breaking due to the pressure.  

After the room temperature fermentation, place jars in the refrigerator and enjoy.