July 4, 2013

Sriracha-Style Hot Pepper Sauce

Sriracha-Style Hot Pepper Sauce
It many respects it is way too early to be thinking ahead to Christmas, but many of the food presents I'm planning on this year take a LOT of time.

I'll be putting up some of the projects here, spoilers-be-damned, and while I cannot put finished pictures up yet, I want to start with some homemade "Sriracha" sauce...AKA "Rooster" or, in the case of some of our friends, "Cock" sauce.
Huy Fong Foods Sririacha Sauce
Before anyone takes offense, the most popular brand of Sririacha Sauce is made by Huy Fong Foods in LA. The label is in English and Thai, but everybody knows it by the big rooster on the front.

I did a lot of researching on the various different recipes that are out there and settled on coming up with my own version, which is a modification of Andrea Nguyen's recipe found on her blog Viet World Kitchen. I made a couple big changes, one of which I'm going to keep secret, but the recipe is otherwise quite close to the original.  If you want to make a small batch, you should just follow her recipe. Mine makes considerably more sauce.....by my reckoning 1 1/2 gallons. To make things easier I did break this down into smaller batches.

Sriracha-Style Hot Pepper Sauce
1 pound Habanero Peppers
11 pounds Bell Peppers
24 cloves Garlic
6 tablespoons & 2 teaspoons salt
1 cup brown sugar
4 cups vinegar
4 Sheets Nori

Acetum Capsicum No. 2
#2 Because the #1 attempt was terrible!
The instructions in a nutshell: finely chop everything except the vinegar (use a food processor), ferment for 3-4 days in glass jars, simmer for five minutes with the vinegar, cool, blend like hell, sieve, store.

I have obtained some awesome sauce bottles that will let me basically water-bath can the sauce into
appropriate bottles. When I get them put up I'll have to append this post. Until then, I want to share with you the label I made for the bottles. It took me a while to come up with the name and the general idea. I think my recipients will get it.

2013.07.07 Edit
I bottled it up last night, cleaned off the bottles and put on the shrink-wrap tops. I had 1/2 of a bottle left over. While still a bit hot for my everyday use, I mixed some with ketchup and it was great.
Shared 2013.07.08


2 comments:

Vickie @ makingoursustainablelife.com said...

This recipe sounds pretty hot, therefore awesome! My hubby likes really hot sauce to put on his eggs, fried chicken, grilled cheese sandwiches, etc, etc,. Love the label - very creative! Thanks for the recipe, I may have to try it!

Christopher Stogdill said...

I basically quartered this recipe (4x the amount from the original) and in that first batch had the pound of habaneros. It was too much and the heat overpowered the rest of the peppers.

When "watered down" with the other three batches without any hot peppers, it was still hot but the other flavors really came through.