This is a recipe for home-canned green hot sauce based on canned tomatillos and jalapeno peppers.
It makes a quite thick, spoonable hot sauce to be used as a condiment.
It is in fact the USDA’s recipe for Cayenne Pepper Sauce, which typically comes out red. What we’ve done is swap tomatillos in for tomatoes and green jalapenos in for other peppers (both of which are safe, acceptable swaps. See modifications section.)
The recipe makes a lot; you may wish to cut the recipe in half (do the math on paper before beginning.)
See other hot sauces.
The recipe
Jar size choices: Either 125 ml (½ cup / 4 oz) OR ¼ litre (½ US pint / 8 oz) OR ½ litre (1 US pint / 500 ml/ 16 oz)
Processing method: Either water-bath or steam canning
Yield: 5 x ½ litre (US pint) jars
Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)
Processing time: Either size jar 10 minutes
Jalapeno Hot Sauce
5 x half-litre jars (US pints)
Ingredients
- 2 litres tomatillos (diced, canned. 3 x 700 ml / 28 oz cans)
- 1.25 kg jalapeno peppers (green. 2 ¾ lbs. Measurements after prep.)
- 500 g onion (sliced. 4 cups, sliced. 1 lb. Measurements after prep.)
- 75 g garlic (minced. ⅓ cup / 2.5 oz)
- 50 g coriander (aka cilantro. Fresh chopped leaves. About 5 tablespoons / ⅓ cup)
- 500 ml cider vinegar (5 % or higher. 2 cups / 16 oz)
- 250 ml ml lime juice (bottled. 1 cup / 8 oz)
- 600 ml water (2 ½ cups / 20 oz)
Instructions
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Empty tomatillos into a pot about 10 litres / quarts in size or larger. You can start warming the pot slowly.
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Wash the jalapeno peppers, stem them, but leave seeds in.
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Slice peppers into rings or whiz coarsely in food processor. Add to pot.
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Wash and peel the onions, then cut into slices. Add to pot.
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Wash, peel and mince the garlic, add to pot.
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Wash and chop the coriander. Add to the pot.
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Add the apple cider vinegar, bottled lime juice, and the water.
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Crank heat on pot and bring to a boil.
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Boil steadily, though not crazily, uncovered for an hour. Stir periodically.
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After that hour, lower heat to a simmer and let cook uncovered for another additional hour. Stir periodically.
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Turn stove burner off. Remove from heat and let cool a bit so that it's safe for the next step.
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(At this point, you could even refrigerate the mixture in tubs overnight and pick up the next day.)
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Put mixture through a blender in small batches, blending each one for about 2 minutes per batch so that it's a totally smooth puréed sauce.
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When blended mixture is all back in the pot, crank the heat to bring it all back to a boil. Stir constantly but mind hot splattering of the sauce.
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When it's bubbling hot, turn off heat.
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Ladle hot sauce into heated jars, leaving 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
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Debubble, adjust headspace.
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Wipe jar rims.
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Put lids on.
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Process in a water bath or steam canner.
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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
- You need to start out with about 1.35 kg (3 lbs) of pepper before prep, with stems still on. Instead of the green jalapenos, you could use other green hot peppers instead, such as poblano.
- 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.
- Yes, leave the seeds in. At the very end, the blender will purée them all and they won’t be visible. A lot of heat is in the seeds.
- You can use 2 x 1 litre / quart jars of home-canned plain tomatillos. Drain most of the water off to save yourself excess simmering time.
- It really doesn’t matter how precisely you chop everything: it all gets whizzed to a smooth sauce at the end, anyway.
- Instead of fresh garlic you can use store-bought minced garlic from an oil-free jar as a time saver.
- If you want, you can use all apple cider vinegar. Just make sure it is 5% acidity or higher.
- It might be an idea to plan to give your blender a bit of break every two to three batches so that you don’t overheat the motor.
- If you did store the cooked mixture overnight in the fridge, blend the mixture cold from the fridge, zap each blended batch for 3 minutes after that in microwave, then add to pot for overall reheating.
- Beware of scorching at the bottom of the pot simmering when using tomatillos: stir frequently or use a heat diffuser.
The National Center for Home Food Preservation rarely adds commentary to USDA or So Easy to Preserve recipes, but they do for this one, presumably owing to people misunderstanding just how hot a sauce this makes. They write:
“This is a very hot sauce. Some suggested uses include:
- Add a small amount to a soup to give it a “spicy-hot” bite.
- Stir a small amount into vegetable dishes to give them an extra “zing.”
- Pep up your cheese dip with a small amount to make it a “hot” item.
- Add some to that pot of chili you’re cooking up – make it fiery!”
Recipe source
- Cayenne Pepper 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 3-17. (Also: Cayenne Sauce on National Center site.)
Modifications made:
- used tomatillo and jalapeno instead of tomato and red peppers;
- swapped out 1 cup (250 ml) of apple cider vinegar and replaced with 1 cup (250 ml) of bottled lime juice for flavour.
These modifications are safe because the acidity safety levels have been kept (in fact, they have been enhanced):
- Tomatillos are more acidic than tomatoes;
- Bottled lime juice is more acidic than apple cider vinegar;
- All peppers are treated the same when it comes to acidity.
Nutrition information
Per tablespoon:
- 8 calories, 2 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.
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