Asian-style hot sauce

This is a thin, drizzling sauce, excellent on rice, noodle and stir-fried dishes. It’s also good on pizza or wings!

When you open a jar, you may wish to transfer it to a spouted bottle for easy pouring.

If the sauce separates overtime in the jar on the shelf, that’s natural, just shake it to remix.

This jar is all about the taste of the peppers, so do use good quality peppers.

This is a lab-tested home canning recipe from Canadian Living.

The recipe

It doesn’t make a lot, so you may wish to double or triple the batch. If you do, just do the math first on paper.

Don’t stress too much about sizes of pepper pieces, or lumps. This sauce gets strained — twice.

Jar size choices: 125 ml (½ cup / 4 oz)

Processing method: Either water-bath or steam canning

Yield: 4 x quarter-litre (125 ml / 4 oz) jars

Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)

Processing time: 10 minutes. Adjust time for altitude when over 300 metres / 1000 feet.

4.28 from 11 votes

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Asian-Style Hot Pepper Sauce

This is a thin, drizzling hot sauce for home canning, excellent on rice, noodle and stir-fried dishes. It’s also good on pizza or wings!

Course Condiments

Cuisine Asian

Keyword Peppers

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour 20 minutes

Yield 4 125 ml (½ cup / 4 oz) jars

Calories 92 kcal

Ingredients

• 150 g Thai bird's-eye peppers (1 ¾ cups / 5 oz)
• 225 g red pepper (Sweet, such as bell. 1 ½ cups / 8 oz / 1 ½ large peppers)
• 2 tablespoons salt (OR non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub)
• 250 ml water (1 cup / 8 oz)
• 1 tablespoon mustard seed
• 1 ½ teaspoons coriander seed
• ½ teaspoon cumin seed
• 1 teaspoon mace blades (crumbled. 1 g)
• 400 ml white vinegar (5% or higher. 1 ¾ cups / 14 oz)
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce (optional)
• 1 teaspoon sugar (white. OR few drops of liquid stevia)
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 tablespoons water

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

1. Wash and stem the Thai peppers. Add to food processor.
2. Wash, stem, and seed the bell peppers. Cut in large chunks. Add to food processor.
3. Add the salt to the food processor.
4. Whiz the peppers in food processor until they are reduced to a paste.
5. Stir in the water.
6. Set aside.
7. In a medium-sized sauce pan, put the dry spices: the mustard, coriander and cumin seeds, along with the mace blade.
8. Toast for about 3 to 4 minutes, until it becomes fragrant or seeds start to pop.
9. Add the pepper mixture, the vinegar, the fish sauce, and the sugar.
10. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cover.
11. Let simmer for 40 minutes.
12. After 40 minutes, strain through a fine sieve.
13. Discard solids.
14. Put the pepper liquid back into the pot.
15. Mix the flour and water together in a small bowl to make a paste.
16. Whisk the flour paste into the pot.
17. Bring the pot mixture to a boil, and boil for 2 minutes, whisking constantly.
18. Remove from heat, strain again.
19. Ladle hot sauce into heated 125 ml (4 oz) jars.
20. Leave 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
21. Debubble, adjust headspace.
22. Wipe jar rims.
23. Put lids on.
24. Process in a water bath or steam canner.
25. Process jars for 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.

Reference information

How to water bath process.

How to steam can.

When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.

Australia and New Zealand vinegar strength special notes.

Recipe notes

• Yes, it’s fine to use flour in tested recipes that call for flour.
• To be clear, don’t seed the Thai peppers, but do seed the bell pepper.
• For the sweet red pepper, use bell, shepherd, etc. If you don’t care about colour, it’s okay if you use orange, yellow, or green, even.
• It doesn’t really matter how smooth your pepper paste is, or just how crumbled your mace blades are. The solid bits all get strained out and discarded, anyway.
• For the flour, use plain or all-purpose flour (don’t use self-rising.) You might also wish to try the same amount of Clearjel instead, if you have it to hand.
• The second time we made this, we increased the sugar to 1 ½ tablespoons.
• The authors note: “For a fiery Caribbean style sauce, substitute coarsely-chopped red Scotch bonnet or habanero peppers for the Thai bird’s eye peppers. For a tamer sauce, try red hot finger peppers.”
• Instead of mace blades, you can use ¼ of a whole nutmeg nut. Smash that into small pieces with the edge of a knife or a meat mallet.

Recipe source

Hot Pepper Sauce. In: Canadian Living Test Kitchen. The Complete Preserving Book. Montreal, Canada: Transcontinental Books. 2012. Page 273.

Modifications made:

• added sugar and salt free suggestions

Nutrition information

With sugar and salt

Per 2 tablespoons:

• 11 calories, 1030 mg sodium
• Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 0 points
• Weight Watchers SmartPoints®: 1 point

Sugar and salt free

Per 2 tablespoons:

• 11 calories, 177 mg sodium
• Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 0 points
• Weight Watchers SmartPoints®: 1 point

* Nutrition info provided by MyFitnessPal

* PointsPlus™ and SmartPoints™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® and SmartPoints® registered trademarks.