As I have already mentioned we are looking at our best pepper crop yet. The sweet peppers, mostly mini-bells and Carmen varieties, are turning the delicious shades pf red, orange, and yellow. The jalapenos are big, fat, and shiny green. The cayennes are long and red and going just gangbusters. I am in pepper heaven. I adore peppers.
I have made a couple batches of
hot sauce recently, playing around with the recipe a bit. I made one batch from just jalapenos. It is strikingly green and quite spicy. I pureed it up a bit too much though (easy to do in the Vitamix) and it is very liquid. It works super in sauces and marinades as it coats everything very well. Its sort of like when jelly doesn't set up. Oh well, now its syrup! That is how I feel about this very thin hot sauce.
I also made a batch that was half jalapeno and half cayenne. That one is fantastic. Fantastic! It has a perfect consistency, lovely orange hue, and a good level of heat. I might have to make this one my standard, go-to hot sauce. I skipped the brown sugar in this batch...by accident since I just forgot about it until after the fact. But, it certainly isn't lacking for the oversight. I want to put it on everything!
We use a lot of spicy peppers in our cooking, but making hot sauce is a good way to preserve some of the pepper glut for later.
My nine year old son decided he wanted to grow hot peppers this year. We tried to grow them from seed, but they were stunted. We went to our local hardware store and bought some. He ended up with about 8 different varieties and 14 plants. I was worried we'd be overrun with hot peppers. 6 of the plants died and we ended up with 8 plants of differing varieties. They did pretty well and we were able to make some fantastic hot pepper sauce in a blender. I hope it was a happy garden memory for my son. It sure was a good experience to grow hot peppers this year.
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