Homemade Hot Sauce with Fresh Heirloom Tomatoes

My brother carries small bottles of hot sauce with him when he travels. No one has sauce hot enough for him. This sauce can be made as hot as you can take it. I learned this technique from a man who kept his salsa a secret.

When you select your tomatoes, use the dark red heirlooms that have few seeds and solid meat. If you cannot find them, strain off as many of the seeds as you can after you have chopped the tomatoes. Seeds are bitter in salsa.

This recipe makes about one quart.

Homemade Hot Sauce Ingredients

• 2 pounds of red tomatoes, washed, peeled, and chopped

• 10 cloves of garlic, finely minced
• 2 large white onion, peeled, finely minced
• Salt to taste
• About 5 Serrano chili peppers, roasted. (My friend with the secret used about 14 peppers for this amount of salsa.) If the Serranos are dried, then toast them. The roasting/toasting brings out a flavor not possible any other way.

Homemade Hot Sauce Steps

1. Place the tomatoes, garlic, onion, and salt in a heavy saucepan.

2. Bring to a simmer and cook until all the vegetables are very soft and half of the tomato juice has cooked away.
3. While the tomato mixture is cooking, roast the peppers. This can be done in a skillet, under the broiler, or in a very hot oven, about 475 degrees. The skins will blister and burn a bit as they roast. Worry not, this adds to the flavor. Be mindful of the fumes — even the fumes coming from these peppers can make your eyes water. Do not handle them with your bare hands.
4. After the peppers are roasted, cut off the stems and toss the topless peppers into your blender. Add enough of the cooked tomato mixture to whirl the peppers into a paste.
5. Thoroughly stir this paste into the tomato mixture.
6. Salt to taste and thin with water if necessary.

Homemade Hot Sauce Variations

• Add more or less pepper to fit your tolerance for heat. If the salsa is too hot for you, add some lemon juice. This addition will cool the fire a bit.

• I have added a bit of vinegar to this mix and successfully canned it in an open kettle canner. The tomatoes probably have enough acid to fit the requirement, but the addition of vinegar helps. Consult a canning guide on this issue. If you are skittish about canning, know that this freezes quite nicely.

Ingredients

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