Easy Hot Sauce

This home-canned hot sauce is delicious.

It’s a pourable hot sauce with the consistency of a popular commercial hot sauce such as Frank’s, which is to say, like a thinnish ketchup.

Don’t let the deceptively easy name put you off. It has a clean, even taste with genuinely flavourful heat. This is true gourmet quality.

Too many commercial hot sauces today are vinegary, sour, salty liquids coloured red with flavourless heat. Hot sauce lovers in your life will love you for this sauce. Makes a great Christmas stocking stuffer.

And, as the name says, it really is not all that complicated to make.

Per tablespoon, the regular version has 65 mg sodium; the salt-free version has 5 mg. Compare those per tablespoon amounts with popular commercial hot sauces which can easily clock in around around 200 mg of sodium per teaspoon. No wonder the commercial stuff can taste so salty: they should call them salt sauces!

This is a medium-hot, pourable hot sauce. For a hotter, thicker spoonable hot sauce see Cayenne Pepper Sauce.

For a sweet version of this, see Red Hot Sauce from Ball / Bernardin.

See other hot sauces.

The recipe

Jar size choices: 125 ml (1/2 cup / 4 oz)  OR quarter-litre (1/2 US pint / 8 oz)

Processing method: Either water-bath or steam canning

Yield: About 7 to 8 quarter-litre (half-pint / 250 ml / 8 oz / 1 cup) jars

Headspace: 1 cm (1/4 inch)

Processing time: Either size jar 10 minutes

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Easy Hot Sauce

8 x quarter-litre jars (half-pint / 250 ml / 8 oz / 1 cup)

Course Sauce

Cuisine American

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour 30 minutes

Yield 8 quarter-litre jars (half-pint / 250 ml / 8 oz / 1 cup)

Calories 18 kcal

Ingredients

• 200 g peppers (hot. chopped, stemmed and seeded. 1 1/2 cups / 7 oz. Measured after prep.)
• 2 tablespoons pickling spice (whole, mixed)
• 2 litres tomatoes (canned, diced, undrained. 8 cups / 64 oz)
• 1 litre white vinegar (5% or higher. 4 cups / 32 oz)
• 2 teaspoons pickling salt (OR non-clouding, non-bitter salt sub)

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

1. Wash, stem, seed and coarsely chop the peppers. Add to a large pot (about 6 litres / quarts in size or larger.)
2. Make a spice bag for the pickling spices and secure them in it. (Tied up in a cheesecloth or other cloth bundle is fine). Add to pot.
3. Add all the remaining ingredients to the pot.
4. Bring to a boil, uncovered.
5. Lower to a steady simmer and let simmer uncovered for around 20 minutes.
6. Press mixture through a food mill.
7. Return the liquid to the pot.
8. Bring back to a boil, and boil (vigorous simmer) uncovered for 15 minutes.
9. Ladle sauce into heated jars, leaving 1 cm (1/4 inch) headspace.
10. Debubble, adjust headspace.
11. Wipe jar rims.
12. Put lids on.
13. Process in a water bath or steam canner.
14. 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.

For salt substitute, non-bitter, non-clouding Herbamare Sodium-Free was used.

Australia and New Zealand vinegar strength special notes.

Recipe notes

• To end up with the right amount of prepared pepper, start out with about 250 g ( 8 oz) of whole, unprepped peppers. If you don’t have a scale, that’s roughly enough smallish peppers to fill a 2-cup measuring cup.
• The recipe suggests Serrano, but any hot pepper would be fine provided you stick to the measurement, don’t go over.
• Do wear plastic or rubber gloves for this. In this instance it is not wimpy to do so. It will seriously burn the skin on your hands otherwise, and if you touched your face or eyes could cause pain.
• If you don’t have a food mill, purée in a blender or food processor, then press through a sieve.
• The goal of the two separate boilings, uncovered, is to reduce the sauce in volume a lot, thereby thickening it.
• We used no-salt-added tinned tomatoes from the store. You can also use your home-canned crushed tomatoes.
• Instead of pickling salt, you can use any other salt that doesn’t have additives: such as kosher salt, or sea salt. If you use a salt sub, you want to use a non-bitter, non-clouding one such as Herbamare.
• You could replace the white vinegar with apple cider vinegar (5% or higher). You could even withhold around 125 ml of the vinegar (1/2 cup / 4 oz) and substitute instead that same amount of bottled lime juice, perhaps adding that in the second stage of boiling.
• You would be fine adding a teaspoon of dried spice or herb if desired such as oregano, cumin, onion or garlic powder, etc. But don’t add fresh herbs or fresh ingredients such as onion, garlic, fresh coriander (aka cilantro), etc.

The peppers needed filled a 2 cup measuring cup.

This is how coarsely we chopped the pepper. Not that it matters overly: it all gets shmooshed!

Recipe source

• Easy Hot Sauce. In: Andress, Elizabeth L. and Judy A. Harrison. So Easy to Preserve. University of Georgia Cooperative Extension. Bulletin 989. Sixth Edition. 2014. Page 67.
• Also appears in: United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Complete guide to home canning. Agriculture information bulletin No. 539. 2015. Page 3-16.

Modifications made:

• none

Smaller sizes might be more manageable for some people to get through.

Safety Check

This Easy Hot Sauce had a pH of 3.71, measured after 3 months. pH will vary a bit of course based on pepper and tomato variety used, where grown, growing conditions, etc.

Nutrition information

Regular version

Per tablespoon:

• 18 calories, 65 mg sodium

Salt-free version

Per tablespoon:

• 18 calories, 5 mg sodium

* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com

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

The no-salt-added tomatoes we used. Look how low in sodium they are!