The Only Hot Sauce Recipe You’ll Ever Need

Over the past year, I’ve become a complete hot sauce addict. I have it with almost everything, from cheese on toast, to scrambled eggs, to fish. Like most hot sauce addicts, I quickly worked my way through the varieties in my local supermarkets before graduating to making my own. Since then, there’s been no turning back! 

I now make at least one bottle of hot sauce every weekend and keep it in the fridge to use throughout the week. It’s become so popular everyone that’s tried it that I’ve started making it in larger and larger batches and sterilising bottles and jars of it to give to friends and family. 

I guarantee, after you make your own hot sauce, you won’t go back to the supermarket brands. Homemade hot sauce is fresher, tastier, has less salt, and is infinitely customisable to your own palette. 

A Hot Sauce Recipe You Can Adapt To Any Palette 

The secret to making a great hot sauce is to know the ratios you’re working with. Once you have these memorised, you can easily scale any recipe to make as little or as much hot sauce as you need. 

Essentially, the recipe is 12 chillies, 150ml of some sort of vinegar, 250ml of some sort of fruit juice. The recipe below is for red chilli and apple juice, but you can try any combination you like. Habanero chillies with blood orange juice will also work brilliantly, as will jalapeños and beetroot juice. It’s all about crafting your own perfect chilli sauce. 

The recipe below is for 350ml, but if you get through hot sauce at the rate I do, you’ll probably want to make 3 to 5 times as much in one go. 

Why Use Fresh Chilli And Chilli Powder? 

The reason that this recipe (and many others) call for you to use fresh chillies as well as chilli powder is that they have different flavours and serve different purposes in the recipe. The fresh chillies add “bite”, that’s the immediate spice that you taste on the very tip of your tongue. The chilli powder is made from dried chillies, and this gives it more of a “warmth”, a heat that builds up a little slower and that you can taste more on the back of your tongue. 

The fresh chilli is what you taste first, but then the dried chilli powder backs it up and helps develop a more complex flavour over time. Like every other aspect of this recipe, I encourage you to experiment. I’ve made chilli sauce without any powder, and it’s still been delicious, equally I’ve made sauce entirely from rehydrated dried and smoked chillies and that’s been great too. I think a mix of both flavour profiles is perfect though. 

How To Seal & Sterilise Bottles 

If you’re just making a single bottle of chilli sauce which you’re going to use within a week, you don’t need to sterilise the container. The vinegar in the recipe will preserve the ingredients for a few days and you’ll have likely finished off the whole bottle long before it’s at risk of going bad. However, if you’re making a large batch and want to be able to store your chilli sauce unrefrigerated in the cupboard for long periods, or plan of giving bottles of it to friends and family as a gift, you should learn how to properly sterilise containers. 

The key to sterilisation is to completely sterilise every implement that you are using for the bottling process, this includes the bottle itself, but also any lids, and also the funnel you are using to fill up the bottles. KILNER makes a good preserving kit which has everything you need to get started. 

– submerge the container and funnel in boiling water for 5 minutes 
– remove the containers 
– decant the sauce into the jars/bottles, making sure not to touch them with your hands or any unsterilised implements 
– put the lids on tight and return the containers to the water 
– simmer for another 5 minutes to seal and sterilise them 
– remove from the water and leave to cool 
– your sauce bottles should now last up to a year in the cupboard. If you open one you should refrigerate it and use within one week. 

Health & Safety When Working With Fresh Chillies 

Getting chilli in your eyes or the inside of your nose can be really painful, and that’s not even mentioning other places! As with any recipe that calls for you to use fresh chillies, you should use gloves while preparing it and make sure to thoroughly clean any surfaces and implements the chillies may have come into contact with. It might seem like a hassle but trust me, it’s worth it. 

You might also want to open the windows and even wear goggles or a mask if you’re working with VERY hot chillies. With standard red chillies this probably isn’t necessary, but if you’re a real chilli head and are using something like Scorpion Peppers or Carolina Reapers, you want to ensure there’s good air flow and that your eyes and throat are protected otherwise your kitchen can feel like it’s full of tear gas! 

So, now the health and safety is out the way, on to the recipe…