I finally had enough time to attack the remaining 50-odd hot peppers from the farm. A few weeks back, they offered UNLIMITED hot peppers, but I didn't know what kind they were. I also picked up some red hot chili peppers (good luck using Google to figure out what other name these peppers go by...), and a
ghost pepper (aka bhut jolokia). The last batch of hot sauce I made wasn't really all that hot, so I wanted to try again. Making hot sauce is one of the easiest things I've ever done in the kitchen: remove the stems, boil peppers with some garlic, maybe some carrots, drain, and puree with some acidic liquid: citrus juice or vinegar. I wanted to really get the flavor of the peppers, so I didn't use carrots this time. I also increased the pepper count: two dozen "mystery" peppers, 1 ghost pepper, and 3 chili peppers, with four cloves of garlic. Since the last batch was really citrusy (not a bad thing at all!!), I used a mixture of vinegar and lime juice. Actually, I only had three limes, so I added some vinegar to get the total liquid up to one cup. My food processor only hold four cups, and I really reached the limits of its capacity, but ended up with an amazingly hot sauce. Since this process is so easy, I went ahead and boiled up the remaining 2 dozen peppers. (For those keeping track, between the pickled peppers and the hot sauce, I probably brought home around 100 of these peppers!) Plus, this way I could gauge how much heat came from the bhut jolokia, and how much came from the other hot peppers. I was out of limes, so I squeezed the juice of a naval orange, and added vinegar to fill up the cup. This hot sauce was probably just as spicy, but there's not way to know for sure until the sauce has cooled and the flavors have melded over a few days. I can't wait for my friends to try it and let me know how this stacks up to the first batch I made with scotch bonnet peppers...
