Making your own hot sauce or chilli sauce is extremely rewarding since you are in control of the heat, flavour, consistency, and sometimes colour. Making your own can also be very economical if you are using your own home-grown chillies, or reduced-to-clear chillies from a shop.
Usually I take a few chilli sauce recipes that I like the look of, and tweak them depending on how I want my sauce to turn out. There are thousands of sauce recipes available on the internet so it can be hard to find one that suits what your after, so once you find a good one start to build on that.
Don’t use exclusively dried chillies for a hot sauce, a lot of the fresh flavour from the chilli will have been lost in the drying process, and you will be left with more harsh heat than flavour. That said, you can combine dried chillies with fresh chillies which is useful if you’re looking to add heat from some dried chillies. I currently have a load of dried Naga chillies which are great for adding to other fresh chillies if I want to make a really hot sauce.
If you’re making a table sauce (thick consistency). you may want to consider using ‘Xantham Gum’, which you can buy online or get from some large supermarkets… It’s a natural binder and will stop your sauces from separating when left to settle, and will also give you a thick, pourable consistency.
Here a few of my favourite Hot Sauce recipes:
Master Hot Sauce – A simple sauce to get you started
Make your own Franks Red Hot sauce
Chilli Jam – Amazing with cheeses and sandwiches
Flavourful mild and hot chilli sauces
And finally, how Making Your Own Hot Sauce Will Change Your Life
Let me know your favourite recipes in the comments below.
