Perfecting the Sauce...

I apologize for my absence, my wife and I recently welcomed our second daughter in to the world and have been a bit busy. In addition to the trials and tribulations of starting any business, let a lone a food specific business, every day life does get in the way. As much as I would like to research, create, market, and do everything to get this company off the ground as quickly as possible, days and even weeks can go by where everyday life, friends, family or my day time job delay my progress.

I made a new test batch (one of the first since my wife got pregnant) a few weeks ago and planned to document the results through pictures. Unfortunately I lost most of the pictures on my camera while taking some of my newborn daughter. I can live with that :)

Creating a recipe for a hot sauce is a strange thing, because it is not like any other sauce, or recipe for that matter. Any other food item, you can taste as you go and make adjustments. Since hot sauces require a final blending stage, as well as a rest period (I like at least 2-3 weeks) for flavors to grow, you really cannot make final adjustments. I have made sauces that turned out horrible and I had lost 2-3 weeks of time. And I have had ones that needed a little something extra, which means I had 2-3 weeks more to go to re-create with additions or subtractions before tasting again. It makes it extremely hard and time consuming to get that perfect recipe.

I had created a Chipotle Sauce in the past that was simple, had mild heat and flavorful. I decided to improve (I hoped) on that sauce by adding the sweetness of mangoes. I also took a previous and very successful Roasted Red Pepper Sauce and added Basil to give it an Italian type hot sauce flavor.

The key ingredient to any homemade hot sauce is fresh ingredients and I use as many as possible in each batch. What will be interesting is to see how many ingredients can stay fresh once these are produced on a mass scale. Every sauce for me starts the same and I will share:

1 Cup Apple Cider Vinegar
1 Cup White Distilled Vinegar
1 Tablespoon minced garlic
1 Teaspoon salt

Add these items and your favorite peppers and other ingredients to a sauce pan, bring to a boil and simmer 15-20 minutes. Let cool slightly before putting in a blender and pureeing to your preferred consistency. This is when you can finally taste and get a general idea. When doing the recent Roasted Red Pepper and Basil sauce I had added multiple Jalapeños which made it too hot and drowned the flavor. In an effort to save the sauce I added a cup of brown sugar. It worked.

Make it fun, put on your favorite music, have a few drinks and enjoy creating something flavorful and exciting. There is nothing better than making something from scratch that was born out of your own ideas.

I have small changes to make to my two new sauces and I will add them to a long list of sauces I hope to produce and sell. While you can purchase bottles and caps from a place such as SKS Bottles, I also find that for this purpose, empty bottles of single serve wine work wonderfully. Plus, you have to empty the bottle of wine first :)