Make Your Own Hot Sauce

In this Instructable, we will teach you how to make a homemade hot sauce. Before we begin, I have to warn you to wear your protective gear, never touch your eyes after cutting the hot peppers and wash your hands well afterwards. Because believe me when I say you don't want pepper dust in your eyes, it is a whole new level of pain. The reward is a beautiful tasting sauce but it could become your nightmare. You have been warned.

• 1 clove of garlic
• 80ml water
• 65 grams of the Scotch Bonnet pepper (this is a very hot pepper so if you don't want it to be too hot then put in less or choose a less hot pepper instead)
• 130 grams of yellow sweet pepper
• 110 grams of tomatoes
• Half a onion
• A tablespoon of olive oil
• A tablespoon of apple cider
• 2 tablespoons of rice syrup
• Black Pepper
• Four pinches of salt (the last four can be changed if the flavour of the sauce

of the sauce doesn't suit you)

• pinch of lemon skin and a few drops of lemon juice

To begin take your hot peppers and cut them so that the centre containing all the seeds is removed. If you want you can remove the seeds from the ribs at the centre and dry them before storing them to grow new pepper plants later ( if you want to maximise the spiciness of the pepper keep the ribs as well as they have most of the compound that make the pepper spicy). Just remember to remove the stem. After you do this move on to the yellow sweet pepper and do the same, cutting it into manageable pieces. Put both of these into a bowl.

Now cut the tomatoes so the centre is removed and put this on top of the bowl of peppers.

Take half an onion and dice it up into small pieces. Do the same with the garlic and put it straight into a blender/soup maker. Add a dash of olive oil on top and then sauté it for 5 min ( sauté is where you cook with little oil but with high heat).

Take your bowl of peppers and tomatoes and add it to the Sautéed mix with the 80 ml of water and mix it using the blender / soup maker for 30min until it reaches a nice orange colour like in the title picture. Then you are ready to add the flavourings.

Right now your sauce is just hot but without flavours. This is where the creativity lies. you have to mix in the right amount of sweetness, salt, black pepper and kick to create the perfect hot sauce, for sweetness, we added two tablespoons of rice syrup into the mix along with a pinch of salt and a bit of black pepper. To further enhance the flavour we added some shavings of lemon skin and some lemon juice. However, keep experimenting with different amounts and tasting your sauce until you get the flavour you want. Boil the whole mix at the end for 5 minutes before putting the sauce into different clean jars for storage. Remember to label them hot sauce, you wouldn't want to mistake it for pasta sauce and pour it over your pasta!

Bon appétit!

Now you have created the ultimate hot sauce all by yourself! You can test it on your food and see what flavour it adds. We bought our peppers from the shop but to add even more flavour ( and make it even more "homemade") you can try to grow your peppers ( the image above is one of my peppers that are growing, but are not ripe yet) and add those to your hot sauce. The beauty of making your hot sauce is the freedom of deciding what ingredients you are going to put in and the flavour you want. However, never rub your eyes when cutting the chilli peppers!