This morning used the last of my home-made hot sauce on my scrapple and eggs. It had been a great season for peppers and this batch was one of the best I’d ever made. Short of making a trip to the grocery store I appeared to be out of luck. Then I remembered the quarts of pickled peppers I had also put up this summer. Thus was born this Caribbean inspired sauce. I’ll probably play with it some more but here’s the first attempt.
IMPROMPTU HOT SAUCE
INGREDIENTS:
2 Qts assorted pickled peppers
3 Cups reserved pickling juice from peppers
2 carrots, peeled and dice
½ C chopped onion
10 garlic cloves
2 oranges, juiced
2” piece of fresh ginger
½ tsp turmeric
1 Tbs dry mustard
½ tsp cumin
Salt
Xanthan Gum (optional)
PROCEDURE:
Drain pickled peppers reserving juice. Stem and remove seeds.
Bring 3 cups of the reserved juice to a boil with carrots, onions and garlic. Simmer till tender. Remove from heat and cool.
Cool, transfer carrot/juice mixture to blender along with all other ingredients EXCEPT Xanthan Gum.
Process until smooth adding more reserved juice if necessary to reach desired consistency.
Taste and correct for salt.
If you would like to keep your sauce from separating, add very small amounts of Xanthan Gum while the blender is running. If you are not familiar with Xanthan Gum PLEASE read the note below.
YIELD: About 6 cups
Notes on Xanthan Gum
Xanthan Gum is a natural food additive useful for stabilizing emulsions (like salad dressing) or suspensions (like this hot sauce). It is a VERY powerful thickening agent and is particularly useful because the thickening is not dependent on cooking and does not vary with temperature (think cold gravy). The viscosity DOES vary with agitation. Think of a bottle of commercial salad dressing. It is thick enough in the bottle not to separate but guts thinner as you shake the bottle. It then returns to the original viscosity on your salad. When using Xanthan Gum add very small amounts while mixing vigorously. Stop the mixing and let the product sit undisturbed for awhile to check for thickness. Add more as necessary. To give some idea how powerful Xanthan Gum is, I used less than a teaspoon to thicken this batch (6 cups) of sauce. Be careful!