The Hot Sauce Fantastic

This Christmas I gave my mom the best kind of gift: one I loved. It was the Pitt Cue cookbook and it's a cracker. In preparation for a chicken wing hors d'oeuvre to a pizza night, I made their untouchable hot sauce.

Ingredients:

1 kg roasted, skinned & smoked peppers

100g charred red chilles

20g finely choped garlic

50g cider vinegar

Smoke your peppers

First you need to halve and deseed the peppers then put them on the BBQ. Ideally use some woodchips or logs in your fire to get a good amount of smoke coming through.

Leave them to get soft and turn occasionally until they're charred and softened. You can now put the chilies on which the book suggests you can blacken but you need to be careful if your fire is hot that they don't become completely burnt.

Leave the lid on the BBQ once the heat has died down and let the chillies and peppers smoke for an hour or two. Make sure the heat is not too high at this point or they will burn.

Skin, blitz and cook

Once the peppers and chilies are smoked scrap the blackened skins off the peppers and combine with the charred chilies in a food processor. Once chopped to a pulp add to a sauce pan with garlic and vinegar and simmer for 20 min. And that's it! 

This batch turned out incredible. It was the best hot sauce I've ever had. That said I think a lot will depend on smoking the peppers sufficiently and getting good meaty medium heat red chilies. I've subsequently tried to recreate this with Scotch Bonnets (Habaneros) and it's way too hot. Enjoy!