Ingredients:
1 lb ripe hot chile peppers
1 tbs sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 c raw cider vinegar
water
vinegar
Instructions:
Wash peppers in cold water. Roughly chop whole peppers into 1 inch lengths (mind your hands!) Working in batches, place peppers in a blender, adding just enough water to allow liquefaction. Pour mash into a clean glass jar. Add sugar, salt and raw cider vinegar and stir to combine. Cover the jar with cheese cloth to prevent fruit flies from dying in the mash (they LOVE this stuff). Stir daily. If you see while excessive white mold forming you may skim it off, but if you’re stirring daily there shouldn’t be much. As new peppers ripen, blend them with water and add to the mix with a pinch of sugar and salt.
After several weeks (depending on when the last ripe peppers when in), hazard a taste. Is it pleasantly sour along with the heat? If so, you’re sauce is ready. Return the mash to the blender for one last whirl. Pour through a fine mesh strainer to remove skins and seeds, pressing down on the mash to expel all the juice and pulp. Measure the resulting juice and add half it’s volume of vinegar. For example, if you have one cup of chile juice, add 1/2 cup of vinegar. Bottle and store in the refrigerator. Use as you would regular hot sauce. And watch out for the habanero hot sauce, it’s a killer.