Make Your Own Hot Sauce!

Photo courtesy of Todd Renner

I love hot sauces, but I know people who are so passionate about them that they treat them as collectibles. I think they're mostly focusing on the labels.

Now marketing is all well and good, but you and I? We love the flavor, right? And that means a sauce that has a kick but isn't going to knock you on your keister. After all, if your mouth is scalded, you're thousands of taste buds away from enjoying your food.

While I admit to having some favorite ready-made hot sauces, I have a few I enjoy making because a) it's a great way to control the flavor you want and b) it's so easy! Years ago, I learned how to make a dynamite hot sauce from some friends during tamale-making season. This is Consuelo's Hot Sauce and I love it! Yes, it's hot but in moderation it can create the most wonderful mouth tingle and chile flavor. I enjoy incorporating it into salsas or adding to soups or drizzling on fish. Then Lorri Allen taught me her thick sriracha-style sauce and it's always in my refrigerator. The tangy heat that comes from the combination of chiles and vinegar, with a garlic finish just makes me swoon in happiness.

Recently I interviewed Chef Todd Renner of Tender Greens in downtown San Diego. The interview was for a piece I wrote for my Edible San Diego blog, Close to the Source, on their new breakfast menu. But Renner started telling me about his passion for condiments, especially hot sauces. He's working on a signature line of them that Tender Greens will sell.

And, then he invited me to come back to learn how to make them.

Renner loves canning and preserving. He also loves mixing savory and sweet. After all, he was trained as a pastry chef. So, his ideas for new sauces basically come from that background--he has all sorts of various flavor combos in his head.

What was fascinating to me as he talked me through the process is just how versatile it is--and the very reason why you should make your own sauces. We made a classic thin Louisiana-style red hot sauce--ready to pour on everything from scrambled eggs to a shrimp taco. Then we made his Mango Habanero Sauce. The mango flavor pops, for reasons you'll understand in a moment. But that mango? It could easily become pineapple or coconut or banana. Renner even suggested adding spinach or beets. You don't even need to use habanero chiles. Jalapeños or serranos will do just as well. And you can switch up the vinegars. Renner is not a rigid traditionalist. As he says, "It makes it exciting!"

At first glance, the quantity of ingredients called for in both these recipes will seem pretty high. But it all cooks down to a reasonable amount--meaning if you like canning, you can have a couple of jars for yourself and some to give to people you really like to enjoy.

A couple of tips from Renner:

• To get the smoothest consistency, be sure to blend the mixtures while they're still hot--just be careful since steam will create enough pressure to blow the blender lid off. Make sure the lid is on firmly and use a folded towel while holding the lid to protect your hands.

• If you want to change the yield but don't want to do the math when it comes to the liquids, Renner says the idea is simply to cover the ingredients with the vinegar in the pot. 

Classic Red Hot Sauce
from Todd Renner
(printable recipe)

This sauce is hugely versatile. Really, it can be your go to for just about anything you'd add hot sauce to. Renner enjoys it on fish--as do I.

Yield: 4 pints

1 pounds Fresno red chiles, destemmed
5 ounces or 30 garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 gallon distilled white vinegar
1/4 cup salt to start

Place all ingredients into a pot. Simmer 30 minutes until tender. Blend until smooth. It will be loose. Strain through a chinois.

Taste and add more salt or vinegar if necessary. Fill bottles or jars.

I recently made my favorite spicy coleslaw for a party. Instead of using Tobasco sauce, I used this Classic Red Hot Sauce and it was sublime.

For the Mango Habanero Sauce, Renner you'll fine that the recipe calls for dried, not raw, mango. He uses dried mango for two reasons--it doesn't add water so you just get pure concentrated flavor and you also get a consistent flavor. You can pick up dried mango--or other dried fruits--at most markets. Renner likes to get his from Trader Joe's.

Mango Habanero Sauce
from Todd Renner
(printable recipe)

I love the pure mango sweetness blended with the heat of the chiles and sourness of the vinegar. It's bright and tropical. And the color? Like the setting sun. Not sure about what to use this sauce for? Renner suggests grilled chicken tacos, jerk-style pork, and ribs. Make sure you apply it as a finishing sauce. It'll just burn up on a grill or under a broiler.

Yield: 5 pints

1 pound dried mango
7 ounces or 26 habanero chiles
4 ounces shallots( 2 or 3 shallots)
1/2 gallon unseasoned rice vinegar
Zest of 3 oranges

1/4 cup salt to start

Combine the first four ingredients in a pot and simmer 30 minutes until tender. Add the zest and salt.

Blend until smooth. Taste and adjust the salt and vinegar if necessary. Fill bottles or jars.

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Holiday Gift Idea: Homemade Sriracha

Every year I search for a great food idea to turn into a holiday gift. I've made herb rubs, chile de arbol hot sauce, rosemary-infused olive oil, and rugelach. This year, my friend Lorri Allen of Cook's Table posted photos on Facebook of her hot and tangy sriracha sauce. I had to try it and she graciously gave me the recipe. It's one of those sauces that will have different flavors depending on the kinds of peppers you use, but will always be utterly delicious. This was my find, and I've been making jars and jars of it to give to my friends and family. You see, it was also an excuse to finally understand the art of canning.

Canning has been eluding me. I've done all the basics, but haphazardly and, to be honest, chaotically. You wouldn't have wanted to be in my kitchen as I was giving  loquat jam or tangelo marmalade or pickled garlic scapes a hot water bath. It was a mess.

Two things changed that recently. First, I interviewed Susanna Brandenburg, "Executive Pastry Mom" at Tender Greens in Point Loma's Liberty Station. Susanna is a magnificent baker and also makes lovely preserves that you can buy at the restaurant. As we got to talking I mentioned how challenging I've found it was to process the jams and pickles I make. She laid it all out in a simple way that made sense to me and that didn't require my having everything ready at the same time like a juggling act. Then I bought Ball's Complete Book of Home Preserving. Yes, it has hundreds of recipes, but for novice preservers the book's true (and forever appreciated by me) value is on pages 415 to 419. Finally, an illustrated and easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to processing. And, it went right along with what Susanna had told me.

With this guide in hand, I could make large batches of Lorri's sriracha without having to tell people to eat it immediately or else. They can sit in a pantry for months safe and bacteria free.

So, onward with Lorri's recipe. To get good heat, you'll want fresh, powerful chiles. My great fortune has been that my friend Angela Nava brought me a beautiful ristra of fresh chiles from Seattle that I've been thinning out.

Red jalapenos are good, as are serranos, banana chiles, manzanos -- whatever you can find. And, if you or family members can't take any heat? No problem. I made this for my mom just using red bell peppers. It's not the same, but it is delicious.

The other note I should make here is that Lorri's recipe doesn't call for processing. This is something I decided to do to preserve the sauce. So, if you're not game to do that part of it, you don't have to. But you will have to keep the jars you make in the fridge and use it fairly quickly.

Sriracha Sauce
(Printable Recipe)
Makes about 3 pints

4 cups chopped chiles (3 1/2 cups red bells and 1/2 cup combination of hot peppers)
10 cloves garlic, smashed
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 cups distilled white vinegar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce

Chop the chiles and place in a medium-size bowl. Add garlic, salt, and vinegar. Cover and let sit on the counter overnight or eight hours.

In the morning, remove the peppers and garlic from the bowl and place in a saucepan. Add one cup of the vinegar mixture, half a cup of water, and the two tablespoons of brown sugar. Add more vinegar if you want a more tart and thinner sauce. Bring to a boil and then simmer for five minutes.

Remove from heat and cool slightly. Then whirl in the food processor or blender until smooth.

If you do opt to process jars of the sauce, follow the directions in the Ball book or however you process, leaving the sealed jars to boil for 15 minutes.

Not only can you use the sauce in the usual ways for hot sauce, you can add it to a tomato sauce for pasta to give it a nice tangy, garlicky flavor.

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Wild Abalone

I paid a visit to Catalina Offshore Products today to buy black cod for a dinner party tomorrow night. But, I seem to have abundant good luck with timing because all the guys at the warehouse were circled around a new delivery of wild-caught abalone from Baja.

Now people who have lived on the coast of California may have childhood memories of catching abalone but recently local red abalone has been suffering from withering abalone syndrome, a disease that attack's the mollusk's digestive track. The bacterium inhibits the production of digestive enzymes and to keep from starving, the abalone consumes its own body mass, which makes its "foot" wither (hence the name) and atrophy. That, in turn, keeps it from being able to adhere to rocks and makes it more vulnerable to predators or simply starvation.

So, more common now is commercially farmed abalone. In Baja California, withering abalone syndrome hasn't been an issue, according to Catalina Offshore Products' Dan Nattrass, but China has been a huge customer and that's what the Mexican market has been catering to. They buy it canned and frozen for import. But, says Nattrass, China has been backing off and now the Mexican government has opened up the live production market to the U.S., if only in small amounts.

While most of us have experienced abalone as a pounded out steak, Nattrass had a transformative encounter in Baja in which the fisherman cleaned the mollusk, then scored the muscle like a mango, sprinkled it with salt, drizzled lime juice and chile sauce on it, and then downed it raw.

Lucky me, as I said. Nattrass just had to replicate it at the warehouse. So, he picked one from a huge assortment that were being salted to send them to their deaths and preserve them.

He then pulled it out of that gorgeous irridescent shell and started pulling off the guts and cleaning it.

Then came trimming. There's a fringe of tissue around the body that Nattrass cut away. He says it's great to include in chowder.

I won't share the photo of the mouth. We'll just move on to the now beautifully cleaned meat. This is the point at which it's usually pounded to remove the chewy toughness.

But, watch how Nattrass scores it.

He then pulled apart the pieces. There was no lime in the office but there were oranges and the juice actually worked very well with the meat, the sea salt he sprinkled on, and then the dabs of sriracha sauce he topped it with. Yes, the meat is chewy but it's sweet and it was a delightful little mouth surprise.

Catalina Offshore Products is located at 5202 Lovelock St. just off Morena Blvd.

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