Discovering the many varieties of hot sauce on the market today and trying each one of them is a fun experience for consumers, consumers, and hot sauce enthusiasts. Making hot sauce creations in your kitchen is also fun and super easy to make great-tasting recipes. It does not take a lot of kitchen experience or a lot of expensive equipment to make great-tasting hot sauce. Here are reasons why you should make your own hot sauce.
Making hot sauce is easy and allows you to produce a fresh hot sauce with the ability to control the pH level. Because many hot sauce recipes use only a few ingredients it is very easy to replace some of the main ingredients, like hot peppers or vinegar, and get a completely different flavor.
It is easy
Just about every blog post I write begins with stating how easy it is to make hot sauce. Throwing a few ingredients in a blender until it becomes a pungent and spicy condiment is almost effortless. A blender is an inexpensive and obtainable appliance that is available in almost any kitchen or can be purchased very inexpensively. Read here on what I use and read here for the complete Blender Buyers Guide.
Hot sauce recipes are easy to follow and usually don’t involve complex processes as other condiments may. Click here for 50 Hot Sauce Recipes super easy to make and super delicious to consume, available as a paperback on Amazon. Many recipes will use a simple process of either cooking or roasting and this will use some form of heat or flame. The best piece of equipment for this would be a common kitchen stove or oven and like a blender, is also a very common kitchen appliance.
Because many of the simpler hot sauce recipes use vinegar as one of the main ingredients the recipe does not necessarily need the ingredients to be cooked. Cooking, roasting, or toasting are simple ways to enhance the flavor of sauces but they can also reduce some of the heat. Read some simple ways from kitchn.com to enhance roasted flavors. It is then as simple as adding liquids like vinegar, citrus juice, or water to hot peppers creates a flavorful hot sauce.
It is fun
Creating hot sauce in the kitchen is fun. Being able to interchange the ingredients is simply because so much flavor relies on just a few ingredients. Therefore, it doesn’t become rocket science or the need for a culinary degree to create amazing hot sauce recipes.
Very few condiments have so much flavor with just a few ingredients. Because of the huge variety of hot peppers available the colors can vary significantly. Hot peppers range in color from yellow, green, orange, red, and purple and these colors can highly influence a meal they are paired with. The bright colors of the peppers will highly influence the color of the sauce and this can be considered to complement the food it is used with.
Experimenting with different hot sauce flavors, colors and consistency can also be very enjoyable but hot sauce is intended to be used with food. Read more on How To Pair Hot Sauce With Food if you want to take your homemade hot sauce to the next level. Many consumers of hot sauce will simply use it as a topping or on the side for dipping. Hot sauce can be used as a layer of flavor in many foods it is cooked with to provide a hint of spiciness or a dominant flavor profile.
Control the acidity
Many things can be controlled during the processing of making a homemade hot sauce and this can make it healthier for consumption. Many commercially available hot sauces have a high acidic content due to the addition of vinegar. High acidity is not necessarily an unhealthy thing but can be controlled more with a homemade hot sauce, especially if you are using vinegar as one of the main ingredients.
Vinegar is a flavor additive but is also used to balance or lower the pH which can make a hot sauce acidic. Read here on Understanding Hot Sauce pH to dive deeper into the subject of hot sauce acidity. Adding or limiting the amount of vinegar in a homemade hot sauce recipe will alter the flavor of a hot sauce. If you add more vinegar to a hot sauce recipe to preserve it the flavor will be changed significantly.
Hot sauce does not need to be acidic. Some vinegar types such as apple cider vinegar have a lower pH and are less acidic. Other liquid-based ingredients used to make hot sauce like citric juices will also have a low acidic level and can be a great replacement for vinegar in a hot sauce recipe.
It is fresh
Although commercially produced hot sauce can have an extended shelf life and still be considered edible it is not as fresh as a homemade sauce. This is assuming you are making hot sauce using fresh hot peppers as opposed to dried or powdered. Hot sauce can be made with either dried or powdered hot peppers, but it will not have the “freshness” of a homemade hot sauce.
Making hot sauce from newly harvested hot peppers will produce the freshest tasting sauce. “Fresh is best” is a common mantra for many products and this can also be applied to a hot sauce. A great flavored homemade sauce does not need to be processed as much as a commercial sauce.
A fresh or homemade hot sauce can still be preserved using canning methods. This is a conventional method of preserving homemade goods like jelly, fruit preserves, or pickles. This method of preservation does require some jars with sealed lids and a canning bath. Read more on Canning Hot Sauce.
What are the ingredients?
Hot peppers are the main ingredient of a homemade hot sauce although many commercially manufactured products may use vinegar or water. This is because hot peppers are such a dominant ingredient that they can be diluted and still produce a great-tasting sauce. Traditional sauces have stuck with a simple hot pepper and vinegar combination but gourmet, artisan, and craft sauces have grown into complex condiments that have layers of flavor combinations.
Don’t need much equipment
A blender is the main piece of equipment needed to make homemade hot sauce. This is a very common kitchen appliance and can also be purchased relatively inexpensively. Powerful tabletop blenders with enough wattage to make hot sauce can be purchased for under $25.00. Read here what I use for new hot sauce recipes and check out the Blender Buyers Guide to find out what works best for your operation.
