Guava Bonnet Hot Sauce
Oooooh baby, this is some tropical-winter-be-damned smoke-your-socks-off hot sauce.
This recipe is the invention of my cooking buddy, the creative pepper genius David Zheutlin, who is co-founder and sauce master at Trop Flavor Co, as well as a middle school history teacher and compost slinger at The Brooklyn Youth Sports Club garden in New Lots.
This recipe calls for two tropical fruits: guava and pineapple. But if you can’t find guava, you could substitute another sweet and floral fruit like mango or peaches. Frozen is fine.
It also calls for rum and brown sugar. Wowza. Tasty stuff. If you don’t imbibe, you can leave out the rum.
If you’re in NYC, a great place to get cool peppers, fresh pineapple, and lovely guava is Calderon Produce Market in Bushwick.
WARNING: always use latex gloves when handling hot peppers and hot sauce. These babies can BURN your skin!!
This recipe makes about 3x 5-oz bottles of hot sauce. You can use old alcohol bottles or jam jars too.
INGREDIENTS
8 scotch bonnet, habanero chili or manzano hot peppers
1/2 cup pineapple, chopped into 1-inch cubes
1/4 cup guava pulp, with seeds removed (2 guavas)
3/4 cup white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon lime juice (about 1 limes worth)
1 ounce of dark rum
1 tablespoon salt
DIRECTIONS
1. Remove the stems and roughly chop and remove the seeds and stem from the peppers, and add them to a small pot along with fruit, water, salt and sugar.
2. Bring the mix to a boil, then cover the pot and reduce the heat to low and simmer everything for 10 minutes or so, until the peppers are nice and soft. Make sure there is still water in the pot, adding a tablespoon of water if it evaporates.
3. Cool the mixture slightly, then transfer it to a food processor or blender. Add the lime juice, rum, and vinegar and process until the sauce is nice and smooth. Adjust to taste, adding more salt if desired.
4. Too thick? You can add a bit of water and vinegar, adding 1 tablespoon of each at a time to make sure acidity is balanced.
5. Fill bottles or jars with a funnel and cap.
6. Let cool to room temperature and refrigerate. Hot sauce should last at least 1 year in the fridge. How do you know if it has gone bad? It will get moldy.
SHOPPING LIST
o 10 fresh scotch bonnet hot chili peppers
o 2 fresh guavas
o 1 fresh pineapple, or 1 bag of frozen pineapple chunks
o Apple cider vinegar (1 cup)
o 1 ounce of dark rum
o 1 tablespoon of dark brown sugar
o 2 limes
o Water
o Sea salt (1 tablespoon)
WHERE TO BUY CHILI PEPPERS:
The best place to find a wide and amazing assortment of chili peppers is at your local farmer’s market or farm stand (smaller and more local, the better!). But we are not all so lucky. While you can certainly find common peppers through Amazon Fresh or Fresh Direct, here is my list of online retailers for more exotic varieties or plants to grow your own:
· Janie and Fernando run a small nursery in New Jersey, Cross Country Nurseries, and have been growing chiles since the early 90s. You can find fresh chili peppers, pepper plants, seeds, and much more.
· Pepper Joe’s sells over 100 varieties of exotic chili peppers as well as plants via PepperJoes.com.
· GhostPepperFarms sells, you guessed it, ghost peppers from their Florida pepper farm.
· Another Florida vendor, Baker’s Peppers offers fresh peppers delivered to your door when in season.
· Bohica Pepper Hut in South Carolina, also sells fresh peppers delivered to your door when in season (late June or early July). Over 200 varieties and free shipping.
· A&M Farms offers mixed variety boxes, plus sauces, seeds, spices and powders.
· Non-dried, chopped and frozen New Mexico and certified Hatch Green Chiles are best found via The Chile Guy, in packages of 5, 10 and 25 pounds; or even a whole truckload!
· Ghost Pepper Store is a bit of a misnomer, as they sell a variety of fresh chili peppers, dried peppers, smoked peppers, powders and seeds.
· Homesweet Homegrown was started by Robyn Jasko, founder of Grow Indie and lauds itself as the “world’s first chile pepper CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).” You can get a share of their chile pepper harvest, and each month a box of 18 hot peppers will arrive at your door.