I have Naga Vipers, which protocol should I go by?

The mango chutney is a great choice for really spicy peppers. One 7pot was enough to give a good kick while staying edible. For people more experienced with eating superhots than myself, I'd say add 2. Then again, every pepper goes well with vinegar, lime juice, salt, and garlic. Its really a question of what you prefer.

but really, I can't say enough about how delicious the mango chutney is. If you have access to mangoes, I'd say go for it. I tasted it before I added the Cuban oregano, and it was still quite tasty. Just don't water it down too much with the lime juice, its supposed to be kinda thick.

I just wish I had gotten to try a chunk of the 7pot by itself before making the sauce, but the wife insisted that I not do anything to mess up my stomach, she had plans for me last night...

Nothing ruins a romantic evening faster than crippling abdominal pain.

I've got some serranos turning red. what's a good recipe for those guys?

got some more brains turning red too, any other suggestions for what else to do with them? aside from shooting them at the faces of people I don't like with a slingshot, that is.

Judo,

Very nice listing and thanks for sharing the receipts. Do you use any kind of preservatives for a longer shelve life? If not, what is your expected shelve life?

Bill

Here's one of my faves, no measurements. I usually eyeball it according to what I'm making, but in my experience it goes best on chicken or maybe ribs. Or whatever, maybe pizza.

Ingredients:

If you are going big, one of those cored pineapples that you get from the produce section works great. If you are going for a single serving or two one of those 16 oz cans of pineapples will do.

I find I like this best with habs, but I know everyone has their faves. So add (your fave pepper here) to tolerance. Put it in the blender and blast the blazes out of it until liquified.

if you have a sweet tooth add a little cinnamon or perhaps a few drops of honey.

glaze your entree of choice. or as I do sometime drizzle it on some lays tater chips.
I have now betrayed my hippie roots. ;)

I actually didn't use any preservatives. I'm gonna keep them in the fridge. I'm a poor college student with a wife who doesn't buy more than she plans to cook soon, so I have lots of fridge space.

that pineapple sauce sounds amazing. that will be my next venture. no liquid ingredients, just pineapple?

Just the pineapple and the juice that comes in the can/container the pineapple will be enough. good luck !!

Very nice list of sauces

One you might want to try is a thai sauce I had at a restaurant a couple times. It was just limes and green thai chiles. not sure if it had sugar, definitely no salt.

anyways, if you have any vietnamese markets near you, you can find culantro there. its under 'ngo gai' or 'sawtooth herb'.

-E

I like to use red serranos to make tomato based hot sauces. Pretty much any combination of garlic, tomatoes, onions, and herbs will be delicious. Avoid strong basil unless you want to be reminded of marinara sauce every bite!

after going to 5 different spanish markets, we finally found culantro. the wife is using it tonight for her "stew pork" (another gloriously delicious trini recipe). it's a bit too late to add it to the mango chutney (already half gone), but it'll be there for the next batch.

Phildeez, that sounds like a good one. what about sweet basil? I have a huge clump of sweet basil growing in the back yard. heck, next time the wife makes spaghetti I'll just throw a serrano in the mix.

now, I've got probably about a month to come up with good recipes for my bhuts, as of today there are 5 pods on the plants that are beginning to look bhut-ish.

Nice on finding the culantro.

i dunno, a lot of basil sounds like a spicy pesto to me!

Judo - The Serranos are very good for pickling.
John A

Glad you found some cilantro. Hard to believe it is difficult to find anywhere, being in California it is pretty much gauranteed to be in every market.

chilemilio, maybe without the tomatoes you could call it a pesto :P I call it spicy marinara! Its delicious but it just screams pasta sauce no matter what you put it on.

Sweet basil could be very interesting, though. I have enough Sungolds and Sweet 100s right now to feed an army, as well as a plant full of ripe serranos. Maybe you inspired me to try a sweet-tomato serrano sauce.

I love to pickle green serranos. Unforunately I was lazy and all of mine are red now!

cilantro is easy to find. culantro (known by many names in different parts of the world) is a completely different story.

in other news, apparently the thai sauce isn't very hot at all. I have no idea how that happened, as it was plenty hot when I made it. I slathered it on my food today, and it was not hot at all. delicious, but very little heat. how does a hot sauce lose its heat like that?

Thanks for the recipes and pics, Judo. Will certainly be trying them once I get a little crop of peppers going. Even without preservative, they should last quite a while in the refrigerator, shouldn't they?

Glenn

Interesting! From a little reading, culantro is something similar to cilantro but slightly more pungent? Is it interchangeable with cilantro? Or do you use it differently?

as I understand it, they are used somewhat differently. I don't think cilantro could be used to replace culantro, or vice versa. though some recipes call for both. it's really big in Caribbean cuisine, though it's considered a difficult herb to grow (I'm ordering seeds soon, I like growing difficult things).

in other news, apparently the thai sauce isn't very hot at all. I have no idea how that happened, as it was plenty hot when I made it. I slathered it on my food today, and it was not hot at all. delicious, but very little heat. how does a hot sauce lose its heat like that?

You added vinegar or an acid, right? That's what happened, you "pickled" it. They say DAIRY is the only thing to relieve capsaicin heat, but vinegar(acid) will also. Try eating a fresh jalapeno and then a pickled Jalapeno -- totally different heat levels.

I love the "mild" people who say that they like Jalapenos because they get some PICKLED carrots or get some nachos with some on them. Then you make some salsa with some FRESH ones and they're complaining that it's too hot.

By the way, made 3 gallons of my six chile roasted salsa.yesterday. That's the "mild" stuff -- when I want to kick it up to the righteous stuff, I'll had about 8-10 dried and ground superhots to a quart.

Kevin

well that explains it! but don't most, if not all hot sauces have vinegar in them? what can be done to alleviate this effect? I just picked another ripe brain strain today, I know that will do the trick, but that's like swatting a fly with a sledge hammer.

double post. thanks, GW

This post was edited by judo_and_peppers on Fri, Jul 26, 13 at 17:29

Judo: No. And if the sauce does have vinegar, it's the AMOUNT of vinegar that matters.

Take my salsa for instance --- out of 3 gal., I think I added maybe 3/4 of a cup just to "tang" it a tad and as a preservative. I don't know if that much will really help with preserving, but it's more for "fridge" shelf life once I open the container.

Here's a good read. Going to try my hand at this myself this year.

Kevin

Here is a link that might be useful: Fermenting Peppers 101

so I made that pineapple sauce rodnebridges suggested. I used one brain strain with a cored pineapple, and some cinnamon. honestly I think it's too much. it made about 16 oz of sauce, comparable to the amount made when I used a mango. the difference is I put the seeds into this one, whereas in the last one I left them out. and holy crap, it's almost too hot for me. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I need more training before I get too much deeper into the world of the superhots. I can survive it without making funny faces, but it's not something I can eat on a regular basis. it's delicious. it's just too much fire for me at this stage.

also I think the cinnamon made it hotter, somehow. not to mention my wife, as it turns out, hates cinnamon. so I'm on my own with finishing this sauce.

I might have to dilute it down, maybe add another pineapple or something.

oh well, one partial fail. as far as I'm concerned this whole growing season was written off as a learning experience before it even started. so the successes I do have (like the mango chutney, which is still my favorite and highly recommended) are just added bonuses.

I made a mango Douglah chutney per your recipe, must say it's very very very good on a cheese burger,I think the garlic makes it that much better!

@judo aww man I hate that that it didn't work out for you. Diluting it with another bit of pineapple might work and you can get more of the flavor and a little less heat. I'm going to make some more of this with my ghosts or scorps later this year and I imagine I might face the same dilemma. Like I said this is an "eyeball to taste" recipe so it could take some tweaking for individual tastes :). I'll bet the Brain strains are really strong, having never grown them (maybe next year) , but yes, cinnamon adds just a little lil more heat. I don't know what it is, but it seems like those pineapple juices really seem to hold the heat of the peppers they are blended with. Here's hoping you luck in the future, sauce making is an ongoing science !!! lol !! Thank you for trying one of my suggestions !!!

I imagine a lot of you folks are on the internet a lot like me and like to make your food within the span of a few minutes so you can get back to gaming/facebook/chatting or what have you....

I happen to order a lot of Chinese food which seems to always arrive with an overabundance of sauces and what not, especially if you order sweet and sour something or another. The perfect use for these stray sauces is to plug a pepper or two into in the blender ( I know, I know, but I love my blender !) and mash them up !! I love me some HOT sweet and sour sauce !!!

hey, it's a learning experience. Rob, I'm glad you made use of that recipe. I still love it. given that I don't yet have any kids, to date, that's my creation I'm the most proud of.

the thing is with the pineapple sauce, I can't barely taste any pineapple, it's all fire. I probably put too much cinnamon in. I haven't yet tasted it again, but I might revisit it. it's still in the fridge.

we made some mango "chow" not too long ago. that is an amazing bit of Trinidadian cuisine. I'll put together a recipe on here at some point. it's much like the sauce, only little chunks of peppers, with big chunks of mango.

I've got another brain turning red. well, it's already red, just letting it develop a bit further. gonna have to do something new with it. something creative. ideas?

so what happens if I roast my peppers on my charcoal grill, then blend them into hot sauce? will I get a nice smoky flavor?

CHARCOAL smoke. I'd use some wood chips also...mesquite, hickory, oak, etc.

Kevin

I'm in the process of making some new hot sauce. it's missing something, but I don't know what.

so far I've put in 2 brain strains,
a red bell (to add some "meat"),
2 tbsp of tomato paste,
some garlic powder (I'm lazy),
2-3 tbsp lime juice,
about 2oz white vinegar,
2oz white wine vinegar,
about 1/4tsp brown sugar,
about 1/2tsp salt,
dash of some spanish seasoning (Badia 'sazon tropicale')

what else should I add? it's plenty hot, and the flavor is good, but SOMETHING is missing.

anyone ever use teriyaki in their hot sauces? I considered adding some worcestershire but last time I did that it overpowered the other flavors too much. it's sooo close to perfect! it just needs that last little something. maybe more salt?

Garlic and/or onion, not powder. Did you roast the bell? I find roasting items really puts my sauces or salsas over the top. I also find using a mix of pepper varieties(dried and fresh) does wonders also. Not just any mixture though -- trial and error has taught me not to just go willy-nilly.

If it seems like it needs more salt, it needs more salt. How about just some regular black pepper also?

Kevin

I agree with Woohoo.. for that amount of tomato paste and veggies, i'd guess more salt.

You have a lot of acid (tomato, vinegar, lime) in there too, maybe more sugar as well.

I did not roast them this time. I only had 2 ripe brains on hand, and was afraid of screwing it up. next week I'll roast some of my many thai peppers I have laying around and call that sauce a practice run.

all of course leading up to my master plan, the roasted ghost sauce. ohh man it's gonna be good. btw I only use hardwood charcoal when I grill, I'm sort of snobbish about my grilling. if I'm gonna do it I wanna do it right. I could see adding some mesquite chunks in there to go the extra mile. what's the best wood to use?

some salt and black pepper was indeed all that was needed. for this one I think this might be the best one yet (the mango sauce give it a run for it's money though), it's really really good. the above recipe yielded about 16oz, and I think the 2 brains was the perfect amount of fire in there for a nice tasty sauce that isn't too too hot. the red bell pepper added some good flavor too, a nice balance.

I will of course have to wait and see what the wife thinks.