Make Hot Sauce With Pepper Powder
We love growing peppers and often grow more than we can use fresh in a single season. As such we are left with storing them by either freezing or dehydrating then grinding them into powder both of which work good in recipes. We prefer dehydrating because the powders are easier to store. The powders work well when cooking. However, a few years ago we learned how to make hot sauce with pepper powder. It’s actually quite simple and requires only a few ingredients to make a basic sauce.
Best Pepper Powder For Hot Sauce
There’s really no hard fast rule on which pepper powders can be used to make hot sauce. Any pepper that you enjoy fresh can be used as a powder in your sauce. Traditional hot sauces are made from Cayenne, Jalapeno/Chipotle, Thai, and Tabasco peppers. If you want to kick up the heat, you could use Habanero or Ghost pepper powder. For a super-hot sauce try using some Trinidad Scorpion or Carolina Reaper powder.
Basic Hot Sauce Ingredients
Making hot sauce from pepper powder can be as simple as mixing the powder with some vinegar, water, and a little salt. Optionally you could include any of the following: garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, dried basil, or dried oregano. Using just the ingredients above with a base of vinegar results in a very thin sauce, similar to tabasco sauce.
Hearty Hot Sauce With Pepper Powder
The basic sauce above will have good flavor, however if you’re looking for a thicker sauce, we recommend using some fresh vegetables as a base. Our suggestions are either sweet bell peppers and/or carrots, both will add natural sweetness to your sauce. Using fresh vegetables will incorporate additional flavor, make the sauce thicker, add color, and lessen (or even eliminate) the amount of water required since the vegetables contain a lot of moisture.
When using sweet bell peppers as a base you could use red, yellow, orange, or even green to give your sauce the desired color. Carrots of course will give the sauce and orange color which will be hard to change if used as a base. Whether using carrots or bell pepper you’ll need to cook the sauce to soften the fresh veggies before blending. We’d also recommend you peel the carrots and remove the skin from bell peppers first.
Making hot sauces with fresh vegetables and small amounts of vinegar will require that the sauce remains refrigerated. Additionally, this hot sauce will only keep for only a couple weeks so it’s best made in small batches.
Spices/Seasonings
Check out the recipe below for a delicious, hearty hot sauce using pepper powder.
Hot Sauce from Pepper Powder
Ingredients
- 1 cup peeled and chopped bell pepper (or 1/2 cup bell pepper and 1/2 cup carrots)
- 2 tbsp pepper powder of your choice (or combination of powders)
- 1/4 cup sweet onion (diced)
- 2 cloves garlic (diced)
- 1/2 cup white vinegar (divided)
- 1/4 tsp salt
Optional
- cumin, dried basil, or dried oregano, etc. to taste
Instructions
- Add 1/4 cup vinegar, onion, garlic, pepper powder, salt, and bell pepper (and/or carrots) to a small sauce pan and cook over medium heat until vegetables are tender.
- Allow the cooked mixture to cool for 5 minutes before adding to a blender or food processor. Use the pulse function to blend the mixture to the desired consistency. If you plan on adding more ingredients stop mixing when the sauce is thick because you blend more when adding the optional ingredients.
- At this point you can begin adding any of the optional ingredients to taste. We recommend adding no more than an 1/8 tsp at a time. Blend in the ingredients and taste before adding more.
- Once you’ve added all the ingredients to your taste you can finish blending to your desired thickness. If the sauce is still thicker than you prefer, blend in small amounts of vinegar to thin.