How to make Hot Sauce

Hot sauce from your own peppers.

Photo by author

Have you ever wanted to make your own hot sauce? It is a lot easier than you might think.

Our homestead garden produces hot and sweet peppers really well, (but does terrible on bell peppers) so we always have extra that go to waste. In years past we have put them out on the veggie stand at the end our our lane but we still always have left overs that go bad.

So this year I decided to try making my own hot sauce from scratch, with the peppers we grow. I read an article in Mother Earth News about it, and it sounded very simple.

Labor Day Weekend (or thereabouts) I picked all the peppers I could find in the garden and ran them through the Cuisinart. It gave me a slurry the consistency of very thick salsa.

I then put the slurry in a half gallon glass jar with a bunch of pickling salt. I ended up adding some salt water since it didn’t pull as much liquid from the peppers as I would have liked. I filled the jar about 3/4 full.

I put the lid on loosely and left it sit on our counter. I stirred it daily for about a month, and in this time it started forming bubbles. (it was fermenting like it is supposed to) The article I read said you could use it after a month but I went a while longer.(Tabasco ages three years) I stopped stirring and let it sit until…